Without 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
