For model Eva Apio, helping support others and launching a charitable foundation rate as highly as her flourishing career
Words BECKY DONALDSON Photography LULU MCARDLE Styling LAURA WEATHERBURN
W ithout her persistence and a commendable steely resilience, we may never have known of Eva Apio. As a teenager, the model, influencer, DJ and founder of the Eva Apio Foundation was consistently knocked back by agencies on account of her height.
Aged 16, when Eva headed off to a camping trip in Scotland, her father booked her in for meetings with London-based modelling agencies. “We went to each one by one,” she tells us from her hotel room in Los Angeles, where she is staying to attend the Golden Globes. “All of them said no, actually most of them said, ‘We’ll let you know’, which means no,” she says with a jokey sarcasm.
The last appointment of the day was with Zone Models. As the director wasn’t available, Eva dropped off some shots of herself and left. However, she was quickly called back and immediately signed. “That’s how it started, I would do a lot of e-commerce for brands like Asos, but then, once I was in, I wanted to move to a bigger agency,” she states.
Again, she found herself being rejected. “Everyone was saying the same thing: ‘You’re short, you’re short, you’re short’,” she sighs, adding how she was scouted by Storm Model Management in the street, only to be knocked back when she visited its offices.
Not deterred when, two years later, a friend asked her to do a walk-in casting at Storm with her, she went along. Once again, she was told her height was an issue, but this time she was determined to succeed.
“I was really pitching myself. I said, ‘I’m a size seven shoe, I will grow taller…’. And then, they signed me saying, ‘We love your look’. I was with them for two years and then I moved to Premier [Model Management], where I am now. So that’s a little summary of my journey,” she says with a cheeky chuckle.
However, Eva’s modelling career actually started before then, at the age of six, when she was living in Uganda. Her mother, Eva Mbabazi, was a model and is a former Miss Uganda. When a young girl was needed for a catwalk show she was walking in, her mother suggested six-year-old Eva. “I still have the video of myself walking down the runway,” she says of the clip she posted on her Instagram feed last year.
Although she can’t remember the experience, she does recall wondering where the money went. “I remember asking my mum where it was. I was lik
