Recommending since 2010.

I’m Ruth Crilly, British model, writer and beauty influencer and my blog, A Model Recommends, has been going - in one form or another - since 2010. Pretty much the dawn of time, in terms of social media evolution; back when there were very few of us content creators putting ourselves out online. In evolutionary terms, we were the equivalent of Homo Erectus, banging about the place with our sticks and trying to carve out careers in an industry that didn’t even exist yet.

Over 50 million views later and not only am I still going with my slightly eclectic mix of expert reviews and unhinged life updates, I’m entering a brand new age. The Substack age.

My human age is 43, for the moment, and I have two smallish children, a dog and a cat. And a husband. (Listed according to pecking order.) After living in London for many years, we moved to Somerset and have been here since 2017.

I was a model, once.

My newsletter is called A Model Recommends because it was established right at the tail end of my modelling career when I was still a proper, working fashion model. I wrote about the tips and tricks I learned in the makeup chair, the new hair products that were genuinely being used backstage, the skincare finds that truly gave instant results and I very quickly amassed a very large following.

I like to say that I retired from modelling in 2012, because in my own little mind I think that makes me sound incredibly glamorous: in reality, you could say that I’ve never stopped. I still model, in a casual sort of way, it’s just a very different sort of modelling to the cut-throat, wafer-thin, nil-by-mouth type that I did throughout the noughties.

And now I make content.

Since the advent of social media, I have spent the majority of my time writing, making videos and creating beautiful (or funny) adverts for brands and then posting this content online. It’s a bizarre space to have landed in, as someone who only started blogging because they were doing an MA in creative writing and wanted to “practice”, but it allows me to follow all sorts of avenues and it is flexible and ever-changing and strangely limitless.

I’m pretty sure this page is supposed to be used to encourage people to subscribe, so please do - my weekly posts on a Tuesday are free, but Friday posts (and wonderful extras) are for paid subscribers.

I hope that this has given you a little bit of background. It all feels very serious and formal, now that I read it back - I have flashbacks of writing some sort of essay for my Duke of Edinburgh award in 1996 - so please do have a rummage about in the posts section and see what takes your fancy.

And also write books.

Well, a book. Singular. I need to find somebody crazy enough to allow me to do the next one. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here: you might not have even read the first one.

It’s called How Not to be a Supermodel and it’s a candid (and hilariously farcical) memoir following my life as a not-quite-supermodel in the noughties. As Lesley Thomas from The Times says, it’s “an absolute must-read if you like laughing”. And who doesn’t like laughing?

You can order your copy here at all good booksellers - it’s available in hardback, ebook and audiobook.