Meet Ruth & May Bell: London's hottest models - and twin sisters

Spotted when they were just 15, it didn’t take long for Ruth and May Bell to become London’s hottest models. Currently starring on Burberry billboards shot by Testino, are these the coolest teenagers in Britain, asks Tilly Macalister-Smith
Ruth & May Bell - Francesca Allen
Francesca Allen

It’s a chilly winter afternoon and I duck into a nondescript Kensington café where groups of flustered mums are distracting raucous children with after-school treats and builders in hi-vis are warming their hands on cups of tea. Amid the hubbub, on a leather sofa towards the back of the café, two elfin beauties are quietly nattering away. They make an intriguing pair: startlingly alike, yet one has elbow-length flaxen hair, the other a defiant skinhead.

The setting is a blast of reality away from the catwalks and photo shoots the girls are fast becoming accustomed to, for the duo are Ruth and May Bell, models of the moment. Fashion is currently infatuated with a mood of opposites: of naivety and rebellion; of raw energy and patrician grace. The twin sisters are no exception: Ruth, with her buzz cut, wide smile and freckles that float on the surface of her translucent skin, and May, with her long hair and slightly more angelic face.

Before we settle in a quiet corner of the café, we head to the counter to order: builder’s tea with two sugars for both and a chocolate chip cookie to share. They are goofy and unaffected, cracking jokes and weaving in and out of one another’s conversation. May (a Mumford & Sons fan) is dressed in a red check shirt and pale denim jeans, while Ruth (who prefers Haim) is in a khaki bomber jacket and beanie hat. She has a certain swagger thanks in part to her shorn hair, which was given to her on the Alexander McQueen A/W 2015 campaign shoot by hairdresser Paul Hanlon (she donated her hair to the Little Princess Trust, to make wigs for children under-going cancer treatment).

Ever since the campaign, the pair have been among the most sought-after in the business. Who was this edgy beauty? Oh, wait — Ruth has a twin? The phones began ringing off the hook for tandem bookings. In a matter of months they had bagged the prestigious Burberry campaign shot by Mario Testino and clocked up a following of nearly 40k across their Instagram accounts. In the same way Linda Evangelista — power hair, honed, athletic physique — personified 1980s dynamism and Kate Moss became the poster girl for 1990s grunge, Ruth and May’s look sums up the current zeitgeist: youth and rebellion mixed with a clean-living innocence. They are part of a new wave of models who have distinct, compelling personalities (see also Binx Walton and Lineisy Montero); glamorous, yes, but also tough and relatable.

Ruth & May Bell

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‘Ruth used to borrow my clothes,’ says May. ‘Because I hated shoes and clothes,’ jumps in Ruth. ‘I’m not good at choosing clothes as you can tell!’ she retorts, tugging at her achingly cool-looking combination of boyish sweater and black skinny jeans. May continues: ‘Now our styles are way too different so we keep our wardrobes separate. I’m a bit more girly; Ruth is a bit louder and doesn’t think before she opens her mouth, is that fair to say?’ she says, playfully elbowing her sister in the ribs.

Just 120 seconds separate the sisters: ‘But it’s a significant two minutes,’ quips Ruth, who was first out on to the hospital bed in Ashford, Kent. Growing up on the outskirts of Dover, they moved to the picturesque coastal town of Walmer near Deal six years ago with their parents and older sister Grace, 22, a physics graduate: ‘She’s the pretty one,’ says Ruth. The twins were on holiday in Paris, aged 15, when a model agent approached them. ‘We thought modelling would be a nice thing to do outside of school and it meant we could travel,’ says May. ‘I wanted to make some money,’ chips in Ruth, grinning. The twins entered the Elite Model London competition in 2013, May bagged first prize and they signed with the agency that year. They are still taken aback by the speed of their ascent. Earlier in the day, as they are driven from ES Magazine HQ to the shoot location, they pass the Burberry flagship in Knightsbridge where a ginormous image of them, shot by Testino, is on a billboard: ‘Look, Ruth, look!’ shrieks May excitedly. ‘It’s meee!’

Now, in the café, she’s regained her demure composure. ‘We’d never thought about it before. I wanted to be a pilot; she wanted to be a paramedic,’ says Ruth, nodding towards her sister. ‘Things just turn out differently,’ agrees May. ‘I left uni because at 18 I went to study paramedic science, but it’s a bit “Whoa”. You’re put on placement in an ambulance, you’re doing 12-hour shifts… You see a lot of stuff and it puts a lot of stress on you. I gave it up, but maybe in the future I might go back to it. You can always go back to education but I don’t feel like you can always go back to this.’ ‘I already feel like I’m too old for this job,’ adds Ruth. ‘I’ve been working with models and they are like, 12! I’m like, dude!’

Their success was almost instant and their popularity only increased their demand for catwalk appearances which, they say, initially felt ‘weird’: ‘At least if you’re going on stage, it’s to do a dance or something. When you first start you think the models are the main focus and then you realise it’s not about you, the main point is to show off the designer’s collection.’ She shrugs: ‘I used to panic but now I’m like if I fall, I fall.’ The girls rarely attend the glitzy after-show fashion parties; May, in fact, has never been to one and prefers to spend a night at her parents’ house where both girls still live, enjoying — like many Generation As — the benefits of free rent and home laundry. ‘Tonight I’ll go home and have a bath, light candles, it will be great. That’s my thing, whereas Ruth is a bit more keen to go out.’ Ruth says that nights out with friends or house parties are more her vibe and not even the draw of London’s nightlife can tempt her to move to the capital: ‘It’s too expensive to move to London. I’m in no rush to leave home,’ she confirms.

Proof that partying can pay off, though, came at a bash for Vogue Paris last October where Ruth, with her freshly shaved head, first encountered Testino. ‘It was super-dark with strobe lighting, you couldn’t really tell who was who. He came up to me and introduced himself. I didn’t hear his name over the music but I introduced myself and we had this conversation for, like, 15 minutes. Later I got a call from my agent in London and she was like, “Mario Testino just called me. He just met you.” And I was like, “Oh that was who it was!” ’ Within days, the sisters had been whisked off to a London studio to shoot with him, which they describe as a ‘three-day chill-fest’. May leans forwards and snaps off half the chocolate chip cookie on the table between us: ‘I was a little bit nervous because I had never worked with him before, but Ruth just said, “Look, he’s cool, you’ll get on with him.” And I did. He really gets involved and he’s chill. If it doesn’t work, you just move on; he’s calm and he’s cool and he knows what he wants.’ The admiration is mutual. ‘Finding girls like Ruth and May is not always easy,’ Testino tells me. ‘Beauty mixed with personality is not a given and they have tons of it.’

‘What is downtime?’ says Ruth, when I ask what a day off might look like. ‘When I do get days off, I just sleep because literally I don’t have time to sleep.’

May interjects: ‘That’s not strictly true…!’

Ruth: ‘Oh! Don’t! I have this whole cool vibe going on, I’ve worked really hard to fake this!’

May: ‘The cat is out of the bag! She is building a model car. She’s painted it and now she’s putting it together.’

Ruth: ‘I’ll get bullied by my model friends now!’

For May, however, a new chapter awaits. The Burberry show at London Fashion Week was her last catwalk appearance for a while. ‘She is going to work as a dentist’s apprentice,’ Ruth explains. ‘Her boyfriend got a job as a commercial pilot so I think they are going to be moving around a bit.’

There’s also a big birthday to celebrate. The sisters will turn 20 in May — uncannily they are Gemini — and they plan on marking the day in their own differing ways: Ruth has a trip to Vegas chalked up, while May will likely spend it at home with a book. And there you have it: two sides of the same coin, and both of their stocks soaring.

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