Rosalynd Ramage & Alison Bruce, Colours Model Agency

0:02Rosalynd Ramage: Welcome to the Business of Modelling, the podcast where we explore the fascinating world of the modelling industry. I'm Tessa Dewing, Managing Director of Sandra Reynolds, a commercial model agency celebrating its 50th year of business. If you're a model in Scotland and you're serious about long-term career management, Rosalynd Ramage and Alison Bruce at Colours Agency are names you definitely need to know. Established almost 30 years ago, Rosalind and Alison have built one of Scotland's most respected agencies, scouting, developing and managing models who've gone on to work internationally across fashion editorial, catwalk and commercial campaigns, as well as working with globally renowned brands shooting in Scotland.

0:51Rosalynd Ramage: Colours has launched some of the most exciting names in modelling today. We're going to talk about their journey, the people they've championed, the realities of agency life outside London, and what it takes to build modelling careers that last. Hello, Rosalind and Alison. Welcome.

1:10Alison Bruce: Hello. Good to be here. We're excited to be here to meet you and chat to you about everything to do with the industry.

1:18Rosalynd Ramage: Before we get into the business side, I want to start with you two. So tell me each of you about your backgrounds and then up to the point that you met. Start with Rosalind. My background, I was at university studying economics and finance and I was out celebrating a friend's 21st birthday. His mum and dad took a crowd of us out and the mum and dad owned clothes shops. And she asked me at one point during the night, would I do a fashion show for her? And I said, absolutely not. I couldn't think of anything worse, having a spotlight on me like that. And she kept asking me. And as I got a little bit tipsy, shall we say, at the end of the night, she asked me again.

2:08Rosalynd Ramage: I said, sure, that sounds like lots of fun. Woke up the next day and thought, oh, dear God, no, absolutely not. Anyway, she phoned me again and talked me into it. And I said, I'll just do it this once. and she said, if you don't enjoy it, I promise I'll never ask you to do anything like this again. And I went along and I did the show and I absolutely loved it. Absolutely loved it. The girls that were there were so kind and helpful. And a couple of them were in an agency and they said, we're going to speak to our agent and you should come in to the agency and do more of this. So that's how I started to model.

2:45Rosalynd Ramage: Where did you grow up? In East Kilbride.

2:47Alison Bruce: Yeah.

2:47Rosalynd Ramage: In East Kilbride. I grew up there. so it was a great place to grow up. And until that point at university then, fashion had never been in your mind? No. No, not at all. Your path was more finance? Yeah, I fully intended to go into investment banking and live in London and have this fabulous millionaire lifestyle. Use the plan. You fool.

3:12Alison Bruce: Yeah.

3:14Rosalynd Ramage: He wants that. Yeah, so it changed.

3:18Alison Bruce: it changed absolutely everything okay and you remember that show the first time you were so did

3:24Rosalynd Ramage: they they must have given you some training or did they just get you up there no the girls that were doing the show did these shows for her all the time and they were so helpful you know before the show they took me out onto the catwalk and showed me how to turn and you know how to take a jacket off and how to walk they were really really lovely i used to have all different turns and everything back then, didn't you? How you turned up if you were leaving left-hand side of the stage. Great time. So I ended up doing a few more shows for her as well and then joined the agency and started modelling.

3:58Rosalynd Ramage: So that supplemented my income while I was at university. Had a part-time job as well in a bar. Had my Saturday job too. So yeah, just happy to earn and keep working all the time. And then from university, did you carry on modelling after university? I did. No, I did carry on after university because the plan was that I was going to go and do a master's in finance. What I didn't realise was that when you did a four year honours degree, that was all your funding done. I just was very naive and thought as long as you wanted to keep educating yourself, you could still go and do that and the government would pay your fees.

4:39Rosalynd Ramage: So that was incredibly naive of me. So I got the bill in and phoned them to say, how do people pay for this? And they essentially just said, well, you know, obviously you're going to have to pay it yourself. So I asked if I could delay my entry for a year and continue to model and save the money and go the following year. And back then you could be booked for things six months in advance. So it was fantastic because you knew what you were doing, you know, for the next six months. your diary was was pretty full so it was great for me to be able to save the money but then I got used to the money and phoned the university the following year and said can I delay it for another year and then continued to work and then delayed it for a further year after that and then Alison and I met.

5:26Rosalynd Ramage: Oh so you actually didn't ever go and do that Masters. I'm thinking Alison you are going to tell me that she is in charge of the finance at the agency. Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

5:36Alison Bruce: Nobody would put me in charge of finance anyway, because I'd be a runaway train. So tell me where you grew up and what your background was. So my background, not dissimilar to Rosalind. I grew up in Paisley, which isn't far out of Glasgow. I was really, in those days when I was coming through school, became quite politicised. So I loved the CND, I loved a march, I loved to campaign. I loved to lie outside Fas Lane. I was very motivated to, I don't know, march and campaign and protest. I just felt that was a teenage rite of passage for me.

6:14Rosalynd Ramage: Okay, so what were you campaigning for? Oh my God, if you could find anything.

6:18Alison Bruce: Yeah, I think I was just constantly angry. I think I was pretty hormonal really. And I went to college. So I decided that I wanted to go and study. I don't want to go to university. all felt too serious and heavy so I went to college and studied arts management which sounds really obscure but it was basically a concept course which was about the management of theatres and galleries and museums and arts festivals and I thought all right okay that's a bit of me because it seems quite cultured on the surface really interesting people there's a bit of depth of knowledge there that I really wanted to grasp and get my brain around.

6:59Alison Bruce: So I pursued that and then I got in, so came through the two years and should have gone into third year at university and my brother and my mum, because my dad worked abroad, my brother and my mum said to me, I think you've had enough education, that's a true story, I think you really need to get a job. I was like, right, okay, I have to work now.

7:18Rosalynd Ramage: And what were you, so early 20s at this point?

7:20Alison Bruce: Yeah, early 20s, 21. Yeah, 21. And I thought, right, okay, I need to get a job. And we had a real entrepreneurial spirit in our family because my mum had a pub and my grandmother and my great-grandmother were fruit merchants. So lots, a long lineage of working women. So you had a great work ethic. Yeah, women worked in my family. There was no stay-at-home mums. Nobody could really, none of the women in my family could quite wrap their brain around the fact that a woman could stay at home and do home baking. they just couldn't fully process that so there was lots of working women or women that were running small businesses and so that seemed reasonable to me that I could do something what it was I didn't know and then Rosalind and I met on the set of Taggart if you remember it did you yeah we were actually cocktail waitresses on Taggart so you were supporting her essays

8:11Rosalynd Ramage: basically were you extras on Taggart?

8:14Alison Bruce: Yeah I have featured extras Tessa I'm sorry featured extras you got your extra tea pan you got slightly ahead in the queue where you were really at the back end of the queue for the food truck so it was great we just we met on set we had such a laugh we had our own Winnebago we thought we were actually Bright Lights big city we thought we were doing really well and we just really hit it off immediately we did

8:40Rosalynd Ramage: talked and talked and talked and talked because you know yourself on set there's so much downtime you know So we just blathered the entire day. So just straight away.

8:50Alison Bruce: And I think that this industry in particular is very good for that. When women come together, young women, they have so much downtime on set. And, you know, if they're filming anything or shooting anything or traveling anywhere, they get to make those really strong connections over such a short period of time. And that's what happened with us. So we had already a really good understanding of the industry and how models communicated and what agents were like and what we liked and what we didn't like. And you can imagine two young women in their 20s bashing that out as if they knew everything. Because you think you know everything at that age.

9:25Rosalynd Ramage: So at this point, you were working mainly as a model. Yes. And you were obviously registered with a casting agency. No, I modeled as well. Alison and I were in the same agency. It's hard to believe.

9:40Alison Bruce: I know, that's funny. It's hard to believe. we were in the same agency and then I got approached by the woman that owned the agency well the agency had been bought and sold in the time that we were there which agency was that?

9:52Rosalynd Ramage: is it still going? no it's not

9:54Alison Bruce: it was called the best agency and then it was called model directory so it was kind of bought and sold

9:59Rosalynd Ramage: I remember model directory

10:00Alison Bruce: so the woman that owned it was a woman called Michelle Lean who was a lovely person and really supportive and very considered and she had modelled I think she'd been a former Miss Scotland Scotland was very beauty pageant centric for a time in the I would say 70s and 80s so there was a lot of that so we came into the industry at a time where women were running agencies but they had a very different background from the one that we had had it was very sort of grooming school prime of Miss Jean Brodie you know stand with four books in your head and say the right thing do the right thing don't swear you know don't do any of those things it was etiquette classes were all the go then and it was not us it was not us but my parents that's how I got scouted

10:48Rosalynd Ramage: but that's how modelling started wasn't it from you back to Ford in New York and they were sort of trained they had their little cases and they you know

10:56Alison Bruce: well my mum was determined that I should be more ladylike since I was such a tomboy and I was always sort of climbing trees and breaking bones and getting into fights with boys and lying outside nuclear plants so he thought how do we do this so I got sent to a sort of deportment modeling school and I loved it and I got on so well with all the girls that were there and then I got scouted by the woman that owned the agency a woman called Fiona B and that's that's how it came about and then we met on Taggart we had such a great time together and we had a really good connection and we laughed such a lot didn't we when we met on jobs and I think humor for us has been such a part of who we are as agents and how we manage and navigate the madness of it all.

11:40Alison Bruce: It's not taking life so seriously. You can take the business seriously, but you have to sort of keep the sense of humour.

11:50Rosalynd Ramage: The work that you guys were doing back then as models, what was it like? Because you said you were obviously working pretty consistently. She worked more than me. Okay. She's tall and gorgeous. But you were getting booked six months ahead. I mean, that's unheard of now, isn't it? Oh, absolutely unheard of now. So do you feel like back then it was a lot more of a stable career than it can be now? I think back then it was very much Scotland-centric. And the agencies then really only worked with clients in Scotland. And Alison and I...

12:28Alison Bruce: There was a great wholesale industry in Scotland. Yes, right. so there was a good sort of they call it the rag trade so there was lots of wholesalers lots of lookbooks and stuff look books yeah lookbook shows trunk shows sample show all of these things these are live events and they need models for them so it was wonderful so even somebody that was like a wee shorty like me I could go and do stuff for certain companies like North Face because the samples were the right size for somebody my height so I was reasonably busy for a period of time but I knew for sure that it wasn't an industry that was ever going to succeed to any level so I kind of feel a bit apologetic about saying that I modelled because when I think about the people we rep as models and the level that they're at and the standard that they model to and how they travel and how they manage that we never talk about the fact that we modelled.

13:22Alison Bruce: No, we never do it. It's only when somebody says how did you start that we then will address it but it's not something we think about because we don't consider different yeah well I certainly don't consider myself as having modeled to any level at all Roslyn definitely

13:38Rosalynd Ramage: modeled a better level than me back then although it was very Scotland centric Alison and I never felt that that was our outlook our outlook was always bigger we just happened to be based in Glasgow but we always talked and thought about clients that we could work with in London in Europe, about bringing business into Scotland as well as developing our talent to send it out of Scotland. Scotland's always been very creative I think for us I mean you know there was a great creative industry here and as Alison said a great rag trade as well. There was lots of independent shops, it had a good fashion scene it had a thriving music scene in the late 80s into the 90s.

14:23Rosalynd Ramage: Fabulous, fabulous bands came out of Scotland. Yeah who came out of Scotland? You know, you had Deacon Blue, Goodbye Mr McKenzie. Simple Minds. Simple Minds. Aztec Camera. Wet, wet, wet. Altered images. Wet, wet, wet. Hipsway. The Big Dish. Fantastic. Loving money. Love it, of course. I mean, just, I was at gigs every week. Loved it. Absolutely loved it. So you always knew you'd be here, though. Were you ever thinking, oh, real opportunity. We've got to move somewhere else to get that.

14:52Alison Bruce: We would have moved and we talked about it. And it wasn't a case of let's anchor ourselves into Scotland. I don't think that was the gig at all in terms of how we approach these conversations. No. What happened for me anyway was my father worked all over the world. He worked in China and Libya. My brother worked all over the world. My mum had a bar here, a pub in Glasgow. She was kind of the last man standing. If I decided to go, she was on her own. And I felt a level of obligation with that. You know, you do with families. I think women tend to do that often. I then went on to help care for my mum and dad in later years.

15:30Alison Bruce: Rosalind and I talked about it and I thought, well, I will stay here and hold the base here. And Rosalind said, well, I really want to be in London. Like she talked about her partner at the time was moving down south. And we had talked about opening an office down there so that she would work in that office and I would be based in Scotland. And that was in the very early days of the agency. and then stupidly I fell in love and got married and had children. The fool.

15:55Rosalynd Ramage: So what was, do you remember the moment you first talked seriously about starting an agency together? Like when did that conversation start? Talked about it over a period of two years. We did. Every time we were working together in the car going to a job, we didn't necessarily talk about starting our own agency but we talked about what we would do differently. Okay. from what our agent was perhaps doing at the time. And it was just conversation. It was never about starting an agency at all. Those conversations just happened organically

16:26Alison Bruce: because just to refer back to what we said earlier, we thought we knew better. So the agency was born out of knowing better, I think, and a bit of naivety as well. And Rosalind's much more focused because her background is economics and finance. So she's very...

16:41Rosalynd Ramage: So you were the kind of organised strategy. She's the planner. We've got to have a plan. whereas you were a bit more creative. So that obviously works, doesn't it? Very much so. You've got both. My brain's very kind of spreadsheet plans organisation, but I love being around creativity. I absolutely thrive in it. I just, as someone who's not very creative, I have such an appreciation for anyone around me who does. I just, I find it absolutely fascinating. I don't think of myself as a creative person at all. I'm not talking about you. No.

17:18Alison Bruce: Oh, that's hurtful. But that's what Tessa had said. You were more creative and you were more due diligence. She's his own meme, isn't she?

17:30Rosalynd Ramage: Does she sometimes give you spreadsheets and you just go, oh God, I can't look at that. No, I love a spreadsheet. Do you? Yeah, I do love a spreadsheet.

17:36Alison Bruce: I like the organisation of it. I just like someone else to do it for you. And then present it to her. I do like structure and she loves structure. So it's not that I don't like to work in chaos at all, but I do thrive in chaos. I think I'm one of those people where everything's really organised and planned ahead. I'm a bit like, this is a bit of a bore for me. So I do like thinking on my feet and I'm more people centric. So I love to meet people, to be out front and centre, to have lots of conversations, uncomfortable conversations sometimes. that's okay with me that's very much the cut of my jib um and rosalind likes to be the person that organizes things and plans things so we're a good we're a really good balance yeah and why colors i wasn't even involved in the naming of the company okay i think i was out clubbing at the time

18:31Rosalynd Ramage: so myself and my brother um were in my house at the time and we were trying to think of a name for the company so I had you know all my usual fashion magazines in front of me Vogue and Red and Marie Claire and Elle I mean I just lived and breathed those magazines I loved them and what we did was we just flicked through the magazines and any word that jumped out at us we were writing it down so by the end of the night we had about 100 words down there and I was talking to him about the kind of kind of company that we wanted to have about the openness about the diversity of it or you know the range of people and personalities although I don't even think diversity was a word that was used back then but that was what I was trying to articulate to him and one of the words that had been written down was colours and we felt that that really embodied everything I felt certainly that we wanted to do you know a broad spectrum of work that we would do with a broad spectrum of people, a broad spectrum of talent and clients.

19:41Rosalynd Ramage: And so for me, that absolutely encapsulated everything that we wanted. And then I think there was maybe two or three other ones. And I thought when I let Alison know about this, I'm not going to tell her the one that I want because I don't want to feel that I'm trying to talk her into it. So I gave her a list of about five and she said, oh, I like colours. Did you? yeah yeah and i still love it yeah me too it's great it's not gonna date it as you say it encapsulates everything absolutely yeah absolutely and right from day one we were very very people centric yeah because of course we had talked for years about what we wanted to do differently how we wanted our talent to be appreciated and feel valued and that stayed with us the entire time we've had the agency i mean that's from day one we wanted that

20:37Rosalynd Ramage: we ran the agency from my bedroom from my back bedroom my spare bedroom and we did that for two years we got zero funding no help in that respect because essentially we were a service company so people couldn't really get their head around what it was that we were doing I think because there were only two other agents in Scotland at the time so it wasn't something, it wasn't like, you know, we were You go to a bank and they'd know the industry Exactly, exactly

21:11Alison Bruce: People have a very strange view of the industry anyway, as you know so that's a hurdle immediately and then you're talking about it's a relationship that you're creating so that to someone that's investing just feels like fresh air because all we're doing is creating relationships between us and a talent and they can't quite wrap their brain around what that actually means, which is fair enough.

21:32Rosalynd Ramage: Yeah, and actually it's good if you can do it on your own and you haven't got to pay big interest charges and things back if you can build slowly. And then I think you learn as you go, don't you? You learn as you go, you learn to adapt, you become much more resourceful. So it was a really good learning for us in the early days.

21:53Alison Bruce: And I think you gain a greater understanding of scalability and the implications of that. Because nobody's handing you a wad of money and saying, there you go, this is what you have to do. So you have to be really considered about all your decisions financially. And then we put our houses up at one point, didn't we? Yeah, we did. So we did that. We both had invested in property and we thought, right, the only way we can move this forward is if we use the house as a guarantee. And we did that. And that was skinny.

22:21Rosalynd Ramage: Yeah.

22:21Alison Bruce: and it was scary.

22:23Rosalynd Ramage: But you do it because you're not going to do anything else at that point are you because you're so passionate about what you're doing. We believed in what we were doing so passionately and we just we knew it was the right thing to do. And when you were first signing models presumably you started with people you knew did you that you'd worked with?

22:42Alison Bruce: Yeah we did and we we did start really small when we did. We did. And it was really tricky at the beginning because when we would scout people and any small model agent will know this when you do scout people and you start to sort of develop them and train them and build the conference inevitably they're going to move to a bigger agency

23:03Rosalynd Ramage: They get scouted by someone at some festival and yeah

23:05Alison Bruce: And it's so difficult to hang on to that talent so that's why it takes such a long time to build that business model I mean it's never an overnight thing unless you've got bookers from another agency that are bringing talent with them and you didn't have that

23:19Rosalynd Ramage: And did you understand the concept of a mother agency back then? In the early days? Was that always what you were doing?

23:26Alison Bruce: No, not always.

23:28Rosalynd Ramage: No, I don't think we'd even heard of it back then.

23:32Alison Bruce: So we had no understanding of mother agent. But I think that was based very much upon what we had experienced as young models in Scotland. It was very Scottish centric. It was very what we talked about wholesale and presentations. it was smaller dynamics smaller clients smaller fees so we assumed that in order to make big amounts of money we had to have larger units of sales we would sell lots of models and then we quickly realized my goodness it's only five and a half million population Scotland what are we doing this talent has to go somewhere else and if the talent's so good then it can travel yeah they can

24:09Rosalynd Ramage: travel they can go and have that experience and what kind of careers were you imagining for them at this point? Well, probably London.

24:17Alison Bruce: Yeah. I think at the time. Yeah, at the time we weren't thinking bigger than London. London felt like a big, big step and genuinely that felt as if we'd jumped out. We'd made it. Yeah, we'd made it. We'd got somebody placed at, I don't know, Select and that felt really giddy and exciting. And the fact that IMG would chap on your door or Storm or Models One or, you know, any of the networks would speak to you, especially felt like, oh my God, were legit now. People actually recognised that A, we have an eye and B, we can develop talent to a level that that talent could go to another part of the world, can go into another fashion territory, can make money.

24:56Alison Bruce: So that felt really exciting. Exactly.

24:59Rosalynd Ramage: And you start to build relationships with all the top agencies in London. You know, you're speaking to them once a month perhaps at that time and you start to become friends with them. They start to trust you. so it was it was great for us and in that instance it was a real advantage being based in scotland

25:18Alison Bruce: yeah it gives you the opportunity to build real professional friendships that have you know strong foundations let's say so it's in the london agents best interest to have a good relationship with us because if we get the right kind of time we're not in direct competition so it's very good where it does become challenging is you know there's just over five million people in in london well that's the entire country of scotland that's a massive landmass yeah to move around and scout in and find these people because they are like ken's teeth to find a girl or a boy that has that potential is a constant challenge and you know this it's really tricky and then once you find them what kind of personality do they have and do they want to travel or do they want to go and cure cancer or do something that has meaning and depth or could they do it alongside all of this other life stuff so it's building that knowledge of a young person and the business dynamic that we have just was really a perfect fit for Scotland and for the kind of young people we were scouting because not everybody wanted to come in and have a full-time international career so the expectations were easier to manage you know so we could get somebody that natasha lowedi is a good example she wanted to go to university to to study um pharmacology and and we could accommodate that if she'd been in london and we had her place that select select we're kind of like when is she leaving uni come on she needs to leave but we could take that time we could be a bit more considered because we work in a more boutique way so that afforded us um opportunities that maybe london agents sudden to have.

26:57Rosalynd Ramage: And I think it's really important for a model to have that really great mother agency that's looking out for them because once they are starting to get placed, you've got all those other agencies competing and they don't care. They just want their options when they want them, don't they? And I think as a model, that can be really overwhelming. They don't know what to take. They don't know what to say no to. They don't know. They're thinking, oh, and I've heard of so many models that have actually given it up because of that, because of the pressure and the

27:23Alison Bruce: stress of all of that. And you think about the overall career trajectory of that person, you think about which fashion territory they're going into next. Will this be right for New York? Does she need the tear sheets for her visa? You take all those considerations into account and you can plan accordingly. Whereas I think if you're in a bigger machine, well, I don't think I know this. They're looking to book and make money. So there's less thought and consideration. They're a lot more of a number, I think. For sure.

27:52Rosalynd Ramage: It can be quite a lonely existence being a model. So for us, the support network is key. It's vital for them that they feel they are part of a team. And as you say, that they can call you anytime, wherever they are in the world. And we're mums as well.

28:08Alison Bruce: So in this time of having this agency, we've, you know, been married, had children, raised children, thought about things that our children do. Like, you know, Rosalind's daughter is into horse riding. She has a horse. My son's played sports a good level. So they were in playing with professional sports football clubs. So I thought about how they were being treated and things that I would look out for. and that's a good learning for you as an agent how you handle a young person yeah how you look after them how you communicate to the parents how you understand them yeah and make sure that parentally all lines of communication are open even if that person is 19 or 20 they're above age you know they're 18 plus they can travel you still want to have a good relationship with their parent or guardian so that they feel you know colors have you know martin's back they know what martin's doing they know where he is in the world they know when he's coming out of Milan and when he's going to New York how long he'll be in New York for that's a reassurance for a family dynamic that you need because you become a mother agent's more a manager than an agent I think the advantage of

29:13Rosalynd Ramage: our industry is that people can come from any background it's not one type of individual that comes through the door so you have to get to know the person to have an understanding of the best way to communicate with them and the best way that in turn they communicate with you yeah because

29:31Alison Bruce: it's not all about privilege no you know it does help if somebody's financially fluid and they can travel so they don't put everything on account but if you get them placed well with a good agent then things can go on account for them and they can make a nice amount of money and they can go and realize their potential in a considered way that you know and that's the whole purpose of a good mother agent as you say you want to make sure that that structure is in place and you know nearly 30 years of knowledge and understanding to know the pitfalls and what not to do and yeah

30:04Rosalynd Ramage: and also build longevity for you yeah absolutely there is a lot of kind of noise about fast success in the industry how do you keep the models focused on longevity rather than those kind of quick wins

30:16Alison Bruce: repeated conversations really and lots of in-person time so Ross who's head of New Faces spends a lot of time, he used to work at Next and he worked at Storm so Ross has a great background in the industry is well versed in how you manage the expectations. And he's up here with you, gosh that's

30:39Rosalynd Ramage: nice isn't it because you don't often get that experience coming to you do you if you're not in London. Yeah, so we've been really fortunate with Ross.

30:49Alison Bruce: And Mark has a background in the industry. He's the other agent and also worked as a designer. So he's worked with models on the other side. And we've got Valerie and Accounts and Katie. So we're a small team. You know, there's only six of us around the booking table. It's not a lot of people there. But it does mean that we have really open conversations about the models that we rep and how we best manage their expectations, just to go back to what you asked. So there are some people that you have to always manage it because they get really giddy and they want to do so many things before they're emotionally ready, physically ready, sometimes if they're not in the best shape.

31:28Alison Bruce: Because modelling is a physical job and you're travelling and you have to be in tip-top health. You have to present like a professional dancer or athlete. And I think a lot of people that are not in this industry don't understand that. they think this person just turns up and that's them, they're in the best shape of their life but actually it just happened, they didn't do any work for it, it was just handed to them in a plate not true, we all know that it's a hard job physically and mentally

31:54Rosalynd Ramage: have done a lot of work before that and have a lot of people behind them that have done a lot of work before they sort of get to the stage where they're appearing on for the main designers and on the magazines

32:04Alison Bruce: and you're thinking about who they're testing with photography wise, you're having to be considered with the people that they work with, who you have them around, who you have them on set with. So you're trying to lift them all the time. You're kind of like a glorified cheerleader, aren't you? Yeah, absolutely. To keep them going. We actually see a difference in models that come through that have had that upbringing. But we see it with the models that come in, the ones that have never had anything. So they've never done any team sports. They've never been in even a book group at school. They've never done any public speaking.

32:36Alison Bruce: They don't do anything at the weekends. they're the ones that struggle the most much harder for them much harder because you're then responsible for their development as a model yeah and their evolution as a young person and you have a parent sometimes that's saying i really want you to help build their confidence and i think well i'm about to put them in an industry that's about to annihilate completely yeah absolutely you know so i can build as an agent it can help build yeah but the the responsibility sits parentally and within the home, doesn't it? Yeah. And you learn that very quickly. So I think actually being an agent has helped us be better parents because it's given us a really good understanding and how you best support that young person.

33:18Alison Bruce: Yeah. So those two things go hand in hand really well. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, I'm a better agent for having children. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, I completely agree with that. Yeah. I mean, that's not to say that everybody that's a good agent has to have children. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that it's helped me And we need that parental support where they say, happy to green light this. We know that you've got, you know, Natasha's back. We know that you're there for her. We're going to trust you. We trust you because so much of what you do as an agent is only trust. That person has to trust that you understand them as a human being, what their career potential could be, and to actually realise that potential for them on their behalf as a good agent with the right placement, the right relationships, the right shoots, the right shows, all of these things have to be taken into account.

34:08Alison Bruce: You don't know that unless you have some kind of emotional depth. I think that was one of the big things for us in the early days when we talked about, you asked, when did you know you wanted to be a proper business? We actually realised that we had a good understanding of what not to do. That sounds awful about the agents that we had. So what were some of those things? Well, my agent had no interest in me at all. Like she didn't know if, and she had no understanding of whether or not I could afford to get to that job or that test shoot or that production, nor did she care. And she came from quite a nice background.

34:42Alison Bruce: So she financially was always fluid. So her understanding of the challenges that people had were completely removed from the reality of my life and other people that I modelled with. You know, other young men and women that came from working class backgrounds that didn't have a mum or a dad that could just buy them a car for their birthday or whatever. She had no understanding, nor did she care. And she was pretty open about that. So that then makes you think, oh, that's not how I would handle it. So it was a good thing. It was a good thing that I had that kind of agent and that Rosalind had that kind of agent because it made us think about how to better handle those situations and what kind of conversations we could do.

35:21Alison Bruce: I mean I had a situation the woman that bought the agency asked me to go in and work in the office for like six months and there was a model that we repped who's now a casting director a guy called Des Hamilton and he's yeah yeah so he's a great guy Des and Des didn't have a lot of money at the time and struggled and would openly tell you this and I phoned him up about casting and it was a really big job and I was so excited as a young booker I was like you know you need to go and and he said I can't afford to get there and I was like but Des you need to do this like I remember being really excited and I was sitting in the office and he said there's just no way he lived in Govan Hill he was staring at his mum's he'd come back home because he'd modelled internationally and he said no I can't do it and I drove to Paisley because the office was in Newton Merrins in Glasgow and I got a jar of pennies and 10 pences that I'd been saving and I drove to his flat and chapped in the door and said to his mum is Des in I mean how sad but and Des was just It's like, you're insane.

36:18Alison Bruce: And I said, I want you to take this jar of money because I want you to go to this casting. I felt so passionately that he should get that job. Please tell me he got that job. He got the job. Oh my gosh, that's what a lovely story. But you know, it's those moments where you know. But also, I bet you work with him now. Yeah. And one of the young guys that we repped had a meeting. So he's paid you back a few times over. Yeah, and he phoned me up and he said, oh, I had a casting with Des Halton. I was so excited. And I said, how is he? and he said he told me about the penny jar but I'd already bored this poor guy about the penny jar story anyway he was like a tri-tac surprised what a great story but Rosalind and I knew then like really early on that we wanted to be that kind of agent the kind of agent that would do that that's important that they get it and you understand that because you're that kind of agent

37:09Rosalynd Ramage: and it's remained personal for us

37:11Alison Bruce: that old saying

37:12Rosalynd Ramage: and that's why we've got a business that's been here exactly you know lots and lots of decades well it's because that's why it's here but also

37:21Alison Bruce: it's here because we've built real relationships with people so when we've been doing all these things and to somebody else that's not in the industry they go you're out in new york wow oh you went to paris your model's walking in chanel oh my goodness it's couture it all seems giddy but behind the scenes you're thinking about ridiculous things like does this you know can And they do, should I go and get my penny jar for my mum and dad's flat back in 1992? But yeah, you do. You genuinely have to think about all the things in the background and all of those moving parts for that person.

37:54Rosalynd Ramage: And you're relying on people as well. I mean, that's always, it's not a product you can put somewhere and it stays there. You know, you constantly got, you know, people, people are always going to. There's just so much of ourselves goes into everything that we do. We can't separate it. Yeah. We keep telling ourselves that we should, but 28 years on, it's not going to happen. It is personal, which is why we'll sit at the booking table. And if somebody achieves something that we find just incredible, I mean, we've cried around the table, you know. On the regular. On the regular because we're so happy that somebody's fulfilled their potential.

38:36Rosalynd Ramage: Somebody who maybe didn't even see that they could do this or they didn't believe in themselves.

38:42Alison Bruce: And it could be something silly, like it's just a young model at 18 that's done their first test shoot and they look incredible and they didn't expect that. You know, so it might not be a huge photographer and it's not necessarily that they're walking in Chanel, but just something that really means something to them. A real achievement for them.

38:58Rosalynd Ramage: Give me one of those each, Rosalind. Oh my goodness, I think for us there was a time in the early days when there used to be this huge campaign in Scotland for Scotch beef and they would have the Scotch beef guy and the contract was up for renewal and one of our models we put him forward for it, he cast for it. he didn't really think he could get it and then the casting process went on and on and it got whittled down and whittled down and whittled down and he was down to the last four was it I think and so we were going to get the call from the ad agency about two o 'clock one Friday afternoon so he came in so that we could fingers crossed have the good news about him getting it and of course as he sits he starts to doubt himself and oh I don't think so all these other guys were so great and I don't know if I'm going to get it.

39:53Rosalynd Ramage: And the call came in and he got it, Chris Capaldi, and he was fantastic at it. And to see that belief in him and that lift in him, I mean, we were screaming, we were crying. And to share that with him was just wonderful. It was just wonderful. He went on and he had the best time on all those good things

40:15Alison Bruce: with photographers. He lived in New York for a few years as well to try and do more acting as a result of that role. So it just gave him more confidence in the platform. Yeah, it was the platform more than the actual role, I think, for Chris, wasn't it? It was. That he really needed. Natasha Loweady doing really well has been amazing for us because that was not an overnight success. That was the absolute opposite. And we presented her to several London agents on a couple of occasions and they all said no. repeatedly said no in fact there's certain fashion territories where um it was almost verging on racism I would say about the nose for sure back then we're talking a long time ago but even that it was just ridiculous and we kept saying this girl is between us as a collective

41:05Rosalynd Ramage: team we were like no and then you're thinking you start to doubt yourself thinking am I seeing something that I'm not saying like yeah this girl's incredible but we get a bit I get a bit

41:14Alison Bruce: pigheaded about that because I just think no I know I know I know and that sort of singular vision and it's it's not just me it's as a team we all have to be on board with it but knowing that there's something there and believing in her when other parts of the industry don't believe in her is the biggest buzz and then we got replaced with Select and Michelle Anderson took over her chart when she went on from New Faces to Main Board and that's a great dynamic because Michelle's amazing and high energy and has a touch of madness in her and that's the right fit for Natasha they just love each other that's like a family connection it feels like for them and then we've placed her internationally so she's in New York and she lives in New York full time now and has an amazing career it's a commercial career but she has an amazing career and it's been life changing I remember her talking about having enough money to go and buy her mum a sofa and that was really exciting and I feel quite emotional just thinking about that but that's it was incredible for her that's why you get giddy every week because every week there's a different one of those stories there's somebody that you know

42:23Rosalynd Ramage: or even somebody that just the mind you see the mindset shift and you just think oh this is going to change everything because suddenly everything you've been telling them for the past few years everything you've been trying to do to encourage them just hits home and resonates And for us, I think that was Martin Boyle, one of our models. He was ticking over. Everything was okay. They had a fairly decent career in Scotland. He's such a focused human being, though. It's unbelievable, isn't he? And this focus you just saw in him one day when he came in to the agency for a catch-up. And it has transformed his model career.

43:08Rosalynd Ramage: Right. So he wasn't always like that. No. Not in the early days. I think he just needed, it was always in him, but it was the focus that really...

43:16Alison Bruce: I think he's always, this is where we end up having a debate, I think he was always really focused. What I think he eventually understood from a lot of work from the team as a collective was what his worth could become if he focused in the right way, because I think he was kind of in love with the idea of it initially. But he's... He didn't realise the work and things that had to go into it But he's a boy that if you explain the work, he really gets it because he's really smart with it. So if you say you need to do this and you have to be in this place and you need to work out to this level and you need to get in this level of shape, Martin is like...

43:55Alison Bruce: Oh, my God. He won't do it. It's as if he's in the army. He genuinely... It's like you've given him an order.

44:02Rosalynd Ramage: He's a machine. And then what difference has that made? What's he then gone on to do? Martin will now go out and spend six months in Milan and Milan will be his base. We have him placed in Paris, in Germany, in Spain. So he'll work for Zara. He'll shoot in Paris. We've got him placed in New York. He's out there just now. He'll spend six months out in New York. And that boy just loves to work. Loves to work. He's a delight on set. I think that's something not a lot of people understand as well. that he's absolutely like if you said to him if somebody was getting married it's best friend's

44:42Alison Bruce: wedding he's the sort of person that he would say i'm still going to try and make this job work i'll still fly out he'll try and accommodate everything around work not to the detriment of his life but in a way that as an agent it's a dream to have a model like that because they never put up any obstacles and he's a person that rosalind and mark handle each chart mainly mainly rosalind but she because she's very spreadsheet due diligence her and martin are a great fit because if she puts a schedule together for him and she's like this is how your next three months are going to work out he loves it because he will meet that brief every time every time yeah every time because

45:21Rosalynd Ramage: he travels a lot so it's key to try and find those flights that will work for the client for the agent in Paris, for the agent in Spain that will allow Martin to go and shoot that job and he will arrive looking fresh ready to go, energised because he really looks after himself

45:42Alison Bruce: you don't have to worry about them the ones that are really good

45:45Rosalynd Ramage: yeah absolutely and that's why they're really good isn't it, it's not just because they look nice, people think all you have to do to be a model is have a great look, well that might have been true 30 years ago or something but absolutely, certainly not true

45:59Alison Bruce: now and I think with AI and everything else we have to humanize the industry more than we've ever had to do yeah so to get those people that have those amazing soft skills they're great on set as Rosalind said he's brilliant with people he's very people focused that's a gift to a client because they know that the the actual day of filming or production or shooting will be fluid and on point and that boy will deliver every time yeah he'll bring his a game every time and he gets rebooked by clients always because of that but i also think it's what we put out we attract great people to our agency we really do yeah we do so go back to you two um how would you describe

46:49Rosalynd Ramage: your working relationship now compared to the early days it's not that December really because well

46:57Alison Bruce: this is how we are all the time and we very very rarely if ever in 28 years have argued or fallen out like genuinely we don't argue no we don't do you tend to just agree and you you don't

47:09Rosalynd Ramage: agree no no no no it's definitely not about agreeing i think from the very early days i knew i didn't want to run a company by myself allison felt the same we've always had an appreciation for each other's strengths and weaknesses and we've balanced it out together. It's why we work together so well. I think where we can disagree perhaps on the journey, but the destination is always the same. And that's really helped. So the arguing or the discussion might be about how best to approach a situation, but the goal is absolutely the same. So our way of thinking is different, which is good. we don't want to otherwise there wouldn't be two of us if we felt exactly the same about everything and it's the same with the people around the table everyone around our booking table has very strong opinions on things and we will discuss how best to move whether it's a model forward whether it's the vision of the agency but we all have the same goal at the end of the day and it's good to have the input from everyone else because there may be somebody who thinks about something that I hadn't thought about or Alison hadn't thought about.

48:21Rosalynd Ramage: So for me, that's the best way to move forward, to have all these ideas, to talk everything through, to argue about things, to rule things out or to keep something on the table. We encourage it and ultimately we progress because of it. And what's the part of agency life people outside the industry don't see? How much fun it is.

48:42Alison Bruce: And all the laughs we have around the booking table. No, but I think they think it's fun and they don't realise. They don't realise.

48:49Rosalynd Ramage: I think they think it's super glamorous all the time as well, don't they?

48:52Alison Bruce: Yes, the glamour is what they think. Like, I don't know, most agents I've been in to all of the London offices, people aren't glammed up. It's all administration. You know, it's all antimony. Exactly. It's administration. It's the same as any recruitment agency, isn't it, at the end of the day? You're in a jumper and jeans and you're sitting at the book and table. We're not having the big glamorous shoots, you know, in Cannes, on a yacht.

49:13Rosalynd Ramage: We're planning them. Uh-huh.

49:15Alison Bruce: Yeah. So how you present, I think people have a Meryl Streep devil wears Prada perception sometimes where they think you're walking about in a full length fur coat. With your high heels on. With your high heels on. Yeah, so that. But yeah, actually how much we enjoy it is a really good point because we have such a laugh at work and it's really giddy going through that process.

49:39Rosalynd Ramage: And what's been more difficult than you expected about running an agency? Running an agency? it's been more difficult um what are your kind of main challenges would you say i think running a business for anyone brings its challenges as well as its benefits having the emotional weight of the all these people who rely on you for a salary is difficult to explain unless you've carried it yourself that's really hard really hard

50:22Rosalynd Ramage: so many major brands now choose to shoot in scotland i mean you've got some beautiful locations oh we do we do yeah tell me about some of those about who you know people shooting up here who comes and shoots up here the kind of jobs that you get here well it varies i mean it's across

50:39Alison Bruce: differently so sometimes you're working with a client directly and other times you're working with a production company that's based in New York or a production company that has a base in Paris, but they're dealing with Ellis, who Marie Owen is brilliant, and she's a really good mate. We love her because she absolutely understands how to promote this country better than anybody else that's ever taken on that role. Let's say there's been other people that have worked on location production in Scotland, but nobody's done it like her. It's better if they've got production around them because it gives them a far greater understanding of what Scotland can offer.

51:19Alison Bruce: Scenically, amazing.

51:22Rosalynd Ramage: Because it's fast as well.

51:23Alison Bruce: Yeah, what it offers in terms of an infrastructure isn't always easy. And those production people will tell you that. They could go to this amazing location up north and the light's incredible and the backdrop's insane. but what amenities are to be had locally where can they stay

51:44Rosalynd Ramage: or it's taking them an hour up a dirt track or get all this equipment up there they don't understand logistically

51:50Alison Bruce: and they also have the impression that Scotland the cities, the central belt of Glasgow and Edinburgh have really good connections to all of these other places but we don't necessarily because it can be quite tricky to get to especially the more beautiful the location

52:06Rosalynd Ramage: that's the real, the harder it is of a little slip road off a motorway. Yeah, never is. Yeah, I mean, we've had umpteen phone calls from clients or production companies from overseas who think that everything is within a 45-minute journey. Yeah. You know, so that, oh, you're shooting in Glencoe? Yes, okay, well, you maybe need to think about accommodation for the models the night before. No, no. But they're travelling from Ayrshire or from Fries or from Glasgow or from Edinburgh. because they're in Scotland, everything's half an hour away. Yes. You know, there are times we say, well, that's a five-hour drive.

52:42Rosalynd Ramage: So they can't drive up in the morning, do the shoot and drive home. Or they can't get their head around it.

52:47Alison Bruce: Glasgow and Aberdeen or the distance between Edinburgh and Aberdeen or Inverness is a beautiful location. But it's way beyond a local drive for somebody. Or if you've got a child on set as well, you're not going to have a child travel three hours there and three hours back and then be on set for a certain amount of hours. So you have to think about all of those elements.

53:08Rosalynd Ramage: And it's not until they arrive. No, that they realise that. They haven't done their prep beforehand. And what do you think Scotland does particularly well, though, that does keep clients coming back?

53:18Alison Bruce: I think what they do well is we still get excited about filming on location. So when they were doing Spider-Man in Glasgow, people were giddy doing all the Marvel stuff. There's an enthusiasm here with the local businesses. and communities and local councils that you probably don't get so much in other countries.

53:44Rosalynd Ramage: And it must be frustrating that you've got such great crew and creatives and models and things up here, and yet they bring people in with them. Oh, that's so frustrating. That's very frustrating.

53:55Alison Bruce: That is a frustration.

53:56Rosalynd Ramage: And actually... We have that. We do a lot of production on the Norfolk coast, and it's the same thing.

54:02Alison Bruce: And we've got creatives here that work at all of the Couture Fashion Weeks. Yeah. And yet, if a production company comes to Scotland, they bring a hairstylist who's not at the level of the person that lives in Dumfries and Galloway or Dundee or Aberdeen who travels out for couture. And you think, oh, how to articulate. We have such a high level of talent in this country. We really do. And that talent, and you'll feel it the same on the Norfolk coast, they have to travel for the work.

54:32Rosalynd Ramage: Yeah.

54:33Alison Bruce: So if they travel, they're fine to do that. but it would be lovely if they could get something on their doorstep.

54:39Rosalynd Ramage: Yeah, absolutely.

54:40Alison Bruce: But we've seen it a lot in Scotland. I mean, there's been so many productions. In fact, they talked about traitors recently. It was all over the BBC that the majority of the production team were English or from outside Scotland, which is great, but it would be nice for people that are jobbing within the industry here to get opportunities to work within the team so there's a better balance, which isn't great. but you just have to take the good the good opportunities that are there and that are available and make the most of those and hope that that leads to other connections so that those clients know actually we're in a safe pair of hands with colours because they have a great team of people so we know if we go back we don't need to worry about bringing X, Y and Z over because it's in hand so if we focus on that

55:28Rosalynd Ramage: Ironically it was one of the biggest brands within the fashion industry that did trust us. When Dior came here in 2024 to do their cruise show up in Perthshire, we provided them with 150 hairstylists and makeup artists to work on the show and with all their celebrity guests. So that was fantastic for us because that absolutely allowed us to showcase the best that Scotland had to offer in that talent and they absolutely rose to it and they were superb. Some clients come over, they absolutely trust you already and go, we can see what you can do, this is what we need from you and others come over and they want to protect their team.

56:19Rosalynd Ramage: Now you cannot run an agency for 30 years and not have some funny stories. Have you got any jobs that didn't work out that at the time might have just been made you kind of go into sort of mild panic and now you laugh about them

56:33Alison Bruce: yeah we have lots of mild panic and lots of nervous breakdowns we did have a jewelry shoot um where the model was on set and the ring that she was wearing was about i don't know something insane like 38 000 diamond ring and she couldn't get the ring off at the end of the shoot and she allegedly allegedly she had no genuinely she did she had to go home but the amount of hoo-ha with insurance and client having her to sign this form about how she wouldn't take it I mean just ridiculous but you just get lots of silly things that happen on jobs all the time or you know model turns up for a show and she's forgotten her model bag or she's gotten she's getting the wrong Uber the day before she's had her hair cut the day before or she's decided she's dyed her hair bright

57:18Rosalynd Ramage: yellow yeah yeah we had one model before who was out in new york doing a show and got into a lift in the hotel been a long day and there was a gentleman in the lift and when she got in and she thought that guy drinks in my local pub who'd have thought all this way and there's a guy from a local pub she's like oh my god do you do you drink in the you know the duke or whatever it was called and he just kind of looked at her oddly and then she realized it was Lionel Richie

58:01Rosalynd Ramage: so if you could rewind and give yourselves one piece of advice at the very start what would it

58:07Alison Bruce: be i would say um trust myself more and actually my instinct on so many occasions was right and i would second guess it and we do have we've talked about it at length today very big conversations around decision making at the booking table and rosalind and i being in a partnership can slow those processes down because you spend so much time having conversations around the pluses and minuses and less of that and faster moving so just my advice to her at 20 whatever she was what was she 27 27 just trust yourself more actually your gut is right and

58:47Rosalynd Ramage: your opinions I think I think your instinct is always right isn't it there's so many things so many times where I've ignored my instinct and it's always every time come back to bite me I think for me at that age I think it's it's um aligned with what you were saying Alison but I think at the time we knew we were right about things but we lacked the confidence to push it through

59:14Alison Bruce: I do think there was an element because nobody financed us and we didn't you know we didn't marry wealthy men we weren't from money it's bad poor show isn't it really poor show we married for love um and because of that because you don't have somebody legitimizing your decision making by saying there's the money your decision's right we kind of did second guess elements where we shouldn't have absolutely so and we've built that back again where we're now like yeah really trust instinct it doesn't matter yeah because we can back each other that's enough yeah and what does

59:52Rosalynd Ramage: success look like for Colours now compared to when you began? You know we started as a people first business and it still remains the number one priority for us and it will moving forward. Rosalind Ramage and Alison Bruce thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

1:00:22Thank you.