Brooke Shields, the actress and model who had been in the public eye since infancy, delivered a commencement address at FIT structured around the acronym FLEW: Fear, Lineage, Expectations, and Work ethic. She opened with a confession that she had almost turned down the speaking invitation out of her own fear — the very thing she was about to tell graduates to confront. Shields connected the fear of being a fraud to her own experience being photographed by Richard Avedon. Avedon would close the massive iron factory door of his studio, shutting everyone else out, because 'he wasn't afraid of being wrong, and he never let anyone interfere with his vision.' The lesson was that creative confidence requires creating a space — literal or psychological — where external doubt cannot enter. For FIT graduates entering creative industries where rejection is constant and imposter syndrome is endemic, the advice was both practical and deeply personal. Shields had experienced public scrutiny since childhood — famous first for her eyebrows, then for being a virgin, fighting for decades to get people to 'stop focusing on those things and pay attention to my actual accomplishments.' She knew the fear of being seen as a fraud better than almost anyone.