Hello! Fashion's April-May cover star, Eva Apio, hails from something of a modelling dynasty… her mother, Eva Mbabazi, was herself a model and is a former Miss Uganda.
Watch Eva Apio's Fashion Fantasy
When she was living in Uganda Eva senior heard that a catwalk show she was walking in needed a six-year-old girl to model so she suggested her daughter, “I still have the video of myself walking down the runway,” Eva Apio says of the clip she posted on her Instagram feed last year.
At first her mother was very protective of Eva’s choice of career. “She gave me the down low and would say, ‘I’ve been in the industry and know what it’s like, it’s not all what you see’. Then, obviously because of my persistence, she’d tell me to try it… When I would go home crying because someone had said ‘no’ to me, she’d be like, ‘It’s how the game goes.’”
MORE: Eva Apio on breaking the mould and giving back through her foundation
Fast forward to 23 and Eva Apio is thriving, the model, influencer, DJ, and founder of the Eva Apio Foundation has worked for fashion houses including Louis Vuitton, Fendi and Off-White.
So how does a model with nearly 1 million followers on Instagram spend her dream day? Well it starts in Zanzibar wearing a bikini of course. The Tanzanian archipelago located in the heart of the Indian Ocean is her dream spot to wear one of her favourite swimwear brands, “ My bikini would be from Heart of Sun Swim,” she tells us during her Hello! Fashion cover shoot. For lunch however she’d jet over to Italy, “Any place that has pasta,” she continues, “I would probably be wearing baggy pants, sneakers and a crop top” for her Italian jaunt where she’d go shopping (of course.)
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For dinner she’d go to “an underwater restaurant.” Like many It-girls Eva is clearly a fan of the utterly Instagrammable Ithaa, which means mother-of-pearl in Dhivehi. It’s an undersea eatery located five metres below sea level at Conrad Maldives’ Rangali Island. In keeping with the maritime theme she’d watch Avatar: The Way of Water afterwards. But who would be her dream date for such an excursion? “My mum.”
Sounds like the perfect day if you ask us.
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