Born with a condition called proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), which affected his hip, knee and femur, a teenage Eyers was “very embarrassed” and “very ashamed” of how his leg looked.
Initially advised to wait until he was 18 and had stopped growing, he convinced doctors to amputate above the knee at 16.
“I’m able to put a positive spin [on it] because my situation before amputation was far worse, in my opinion, than living life as an amputee,” he said.
After his amputation, Eyers – from Bournemouth – played wheelchair basketball for GB juniors but later quit the sport to focus on his fledging career as a personal trainer.
He had his own business, working with other amputees and people with physical impairments, when he was contacted by Models of Diversity, a charity that campaigns for a greater diversity of models in the media and on catwalks.
Initially starting out in fitness modelling, he noticed a “grey area” in the lack of disabled models being used in the fashion world.
“My goal was to challenge a perception of disability,” he said.
In 2017, he became the first amputee to be crowned Mr England, and since then has modelled at London and New York Fashion Weeks.
“I’m quite happy to say that I was one of the first amputees to really step into that world and it wasn’t a very common thing,” Eyers said. “Now it’s quite common to see disabled models on the catwalks, whether that be in a wheelchair or amputee.
“It was very nerve-wracking because you don’t know what people are going to think. Some of the able-bodied models, you could tell they weren’t too happy about it.
“Before New York, I went to Italy. Fashion designers and catwalk producers just weren’t happy with the idea because they were talking about the catwalk being like the ballet, there needs to be classic same shape models, same height models. We were changing that, we were changing the mould I believe for the better and it has been for the better.”