JEDBURGH model Luke Page hit a career high this week, writes Sally Gillepsie.
For the 25-year-old modelled for jewellery creators Tresor Paris at London Fashion Week which finished on Tuesday.
He said: “I’ve just been working with some of the top models in the UK. I think for a model in the UK, a top ambition would be to get to London Fashion Week; it’s a great success for me.”
The former brickie was signed by Superior Model Management in Glasgow when he was 19.
Mr Page said: “When I was about 16 people were telling me to become a model, but I started a bricklaying apprenticeship. I got a lot of modelling jobs and I just left and started concentrating on them. It’s been my main ambition and I’ve concentrated on it since.”
Describing his look as unique, he has worked around the world, as far away as Australia and New Zealand, doing both catwalk and commercial shoots.
He counts celebrity singer and composer Luc Floreani and Big Brother finalist and model Sara McLean among his friends.
And the London gig came about after Mr Floreani invited him to go to the fashion show as his guest.
“But when they (organisers and designers) heard I was coming down from Scotland they wanted me to forward my details to them which led to me modelling.
“I felt honoured, it was great, it can only be good for my career.”
His family – father Harry Page; mother, former community councillor Vanda Chippendale, who works in the town’s Ladbrokes; brother Harry, a car valeter; and sister Holly, a hairdressing student – still live in the town he continues to use as a base.
Asked why he modelled, he said: “I just love fashion and I like to look different to everybody else.”
He admitted that in his earlier days: “You get a lot of stick (for being a model) but at the end of the day it doesn’t really bother me because it’s my choice and it’s what I want to do. To be successful you have got to take the opportunities while you can – if you don’t, you won’t achieve anything.”
He thanks Alex Campbell at the menswear shop David Thomsons in Jedburgh, for providing him with outfits over the years and credits award-winning photographer John Parris of Parris Photography in Hawick with getting him into modelling.
He hopes to continue to model for the next couple of years before making a move into television.