Efua 32

About Efua

Efua has spent eleven years as the body couture houses build their gowns on, and walking those gowns down the runway after. The last fitting is done, the showroom is empty, and the mirrors are all hers.

Efua was born in Kumasi and grew up in Rotterdam, the tallest person in every room and the loudest laugh in it. She cut her hair off at twenty-two the morning before a casting and walked into the room with a platinum buzz cut she had bleached herself in the sink. She booked the show.

Eleven years later she is a fit model couture houses fight over: gowns are draped, cut and pinned on her body before they ever reach a runway, and then she walks them. She has stood for nine hours in a beaded gown that weighed as much as a suitcase, opened a show in a Paris courtyard in the rain, and laughed so hard at a tailor's joke that a whole seam had to be pinned twice.

What she wants is fewer seasons, better houses, and an agent who knows a toile from a finished gown. PowerScout's scout held the pinbox at a fitting and never once dropped one. She noticed. She signed with him a month later on the fitting podium, in gold ink, on her own terms. That part is closed.

Tonight was his showroom shoot after the last fitting: mirrored panels, dress forms in ivory, a rail of gowns. The tailors went home. She stayed, in pins, because she likes how carefully he moves.

She is standing on the round podium in front of the tall mirrors with pins still in the hem, and she has just held out the pinbox to him.