Gia Carangi

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I strongly recommen you to read this autobiography about Gia Carangi. In this book you will find all the truth about why was she in the modelling industry, being a bisexual, her parents divorce issue cause her, how she fall to drugs that cause her modelling carrer damage and being one of the first women in America to died of AIDS.

Even in the Cindy Crawford's earlier modelling days, she was given a nickname call " Baby Gia" cause of her similarity of her with Gia

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From Model: The Ugly Business Of Beautiful Women by Michael Gross

Doing the job and making everyone else look good because she showed up was the norm for Patti Hansen. Not so for Gia Carangi, a bisexual drug addict whose brief rise, long fall, and final death from AIDS were the subject of a book, Thing Of Beauty, that infuriated models, who say she was hardly representative. "Gia walked in and walked out," says [Kay] Mitchell, [a Vogue rep.] who booked her as well. "The difference between her and models like Patti or Shaun Casey is that they worked for years. They'd go anywhere and do anything for work."

For a moment Gia was a star, though, working with all the best photographers. "Gia was a real mess," says Bill Weinberg. "A trashy little street kid, not unlike Janice Dickinson. If she didn't feel like doing a booking, she didn't show up." Gia hit quickly after arriving in New York. "She was about melancholy and darkness, and that made great pictures," says a fellow model. But it didn't make Gia any happier. At a shoot for Vogue she stumbled out of the dressing room in a Galanos gown, collapsed in a chair and nodded out, blood streaming down her arm, right in front of Polly Mellen. Weinberg told Francesco Scavullo that Gia had become unreliable, but the photographer insisted she'd show up if she knew the booking was with him. Gia always showed up for him. "Frank called up raving and screaming," Weinberg recalls wryly. Gia never arrived. "She would have been a casualty in any life," says John Warren. After several comeback attempts Gia fell out of modeling and died in 1986.

[bitten] Knudsen: "Gia was my best girlfriend. She was just beautiful. When she was first starting out, we did a job in the south of France with Helmut Newton. He said, 'Throw on the red lips and the bad eyes!' Helmut had Gia and I be girls, and the two other models were dressed as guys. One of them was Swedish and she'd been a real bitch to me when I was starting out. So Gia sent roses to her room with lipstick all over the card, and then she called and said, 'Let's have some fun.' The girl broke out in a rash. Gia and I were like lion cubs having fun. We got a reputation because we didn't hide anything. We did a lot of drugs and went to a lot of parties. So many! We were both constantly on trips, which I think saved my life, because you don't do drugs when you travel. Except when I traveled with Gia. We brought a whole medicine kit. Gia was the peak. She pushed the borders right to death."

The latest topic of conversation in modeling is the resurgence of drugs - particularly heroin - among a clique of models who, in macabre homage, reportedly call themselves Gia's Girls, in honor of Gia Carangi ...

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From Scavullo Photographs 50 Years.

page 116 "Gia, model, 1979

"Photographing Gia was like shooting a movie. She moved continuously, not a single pose. There was a kindred spirit between us." Also in this book is the image of Diana Ross (Miss Ross to you... wearing Gia's jeans! Quoted from Mr. Fried's Book, "When Scavullo and Diana Ross decided to change the singer's glamorous image by slicking back her hair and dressing her down for an album cover, they thought of Gia: not the way she looked on camera, but the way she appeared at the studio in the morning, or in the clubs at night. 'We called Gia up and said, Can we borrow your jeans, the ones with the hole?', recalled Scavullo. 'Those are Gia's jeans in that picture. Diana Ross said she wanted to keep them after the shooting, but Gia wouldn't let her.'

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Quoted from Shut Up And Smile by Ian Halperin :

"Gia Carangi, the former covergirl heroin addict who died of AIDS in 1986, was blacklisted from modeling because fashion editors discovered track marks on her body. Carangi, who once graced the cover of Vogue, Elle and Cosmopolitan, was the top model of the late 1970's. She redefined the fashion industry's standard of beauty. Fashion editors decided not to use her anymore because of her turbulent lifestyle. Carangi was soon reduced to turning tricks on the streets of New York and Atlantic City. At twenty six, Carangi became one of the first women in America to die of AIDS. 'Gia's handlers spent hours trying to help her cover up the track marks on her body, ' says Elyssa Stewart, a former lover of Carangi. ' The problem was that her people were more interested in hiding the marks than helping her personally. Gia was by far the most interesting and provocative model of her time. At first fashion editors knew about all the drugs she was doing but they didn't care. In fact, at one shoot for a major magazine one of the editors supplied Gia with a bag of cocaine and some heroin right on the set. It's only when word leaked out that she might be HIV positive that the editors used her drug habit as an excuse to blackball her.'

"According to Stewart, Carangi is the reason why so many models today shoot heroin under their toenails or tongue, where track marks cannot be detected. Some have lost toenails to infection, some have blinded themselves by injecting heroin into their eye. ' A lot of the agents, who care more about making a buck than anything else, warn their models that if they do heroin they should inject it in careful places, ' Stewart says. ' They tell the young models the stories about Gia and how she was blackballed. They warn them to be careful not to become the next Gia.'

"Carangi grew up in Philadelphia. She was a favorite model of top fashion photographers Arthur Elgort, Francesco Scavullo and Helmut Newton. Carangi was renowned for dressing in men's clothes and wearing no makeup. Her rebellious "take no shit" attitude took the fashion industry by storm. 'If Gia would have spent more time in the beginning using makeup to cover up the marks nobody would have put up a fuss, ' Elyssa Stewart says. 'But she hated makeup. She wanted to do things her way. In the end when she allowed her handlers to use makeup to cover up her marks it was too late. She was already considered untouchable."

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From Cosmo Magazine November, 1989. Excerpts from the article entitled:

"Is That All There Is? A Model's Glamorous Life And Tragic Death" By Stephen Fried

[regarding Gia's childhood]

Gia was a quiet, bright child whose mannerisms were so adorable that she was encouraged to speak in baby talk long after it was appropriate. She was precocious and quietly rebellious, and if she had a truly close bond with anyone in the family, it was with her mother, with whom she could share "girl things." ... Gia's childhood was strongly influenced by an event that took place when she was five: She was sexually abused by an older man. The abuse occurred once, but she was traumatized by the incident and lived in fear that it would happen again. By the time Gia was nine or ten, the tension in the Carangi household had escalated from verbal abuse to violence. While none of the children were ever hit, the parents began to tangle on a fairly regular basis. Finally, Kathleen (Gia's mother) decided to take the unusual step of leaving her husband, her home, AND her children for another man. Later, both parents remarried and shared custody, but in many ways, Gia never got over the temporary loss of her mother.

"Gia did a lot of things just to get her mother's attention," says one friend. "She and Kathleen had this ongoing battle, and the one person Gia always wanted something from was her mother -- and in her own way, she just never felt like she got it."

At that time, there was perhaps only one facet of Gia Carangi's life with which she seemed comfortable: her homosexuality. "She was the purest lesbian I ever met," recalls another friend. "It was the clearest thing about her. And she was very aggressive about it. She was sending other girls flowers and poems when she was fourteen years old." Her mother says that Gia was not gay, but "lived the gay life-style."

"Gia just loved women, and she fell for them whether they were straight or gay," says one high school friend. "And the problem was that everyone fell in love with her, whether they were straight or not, male or female. She went after people and she always got them."

Many of her friends believe that the biggest reason Gia gravitated toward modeling was that she thought it would satisfy her mother on a number of levels: It was a professional "direction", it was the kind of "girl thing" the two had always shared, and it was a vicarious fantasy for her mother. "She knew her mother wanted her to be a model," says one friend. "And she knew it was her destiny. I think she knew that she could go to New York anytime and make it big."

[regarding her modeling career]

Just after her 18th birthday, in January of 1978, Gia was signed by Wilhelmina Models, in New York.

"Gia hated the business from the beginning," [says Gia's female lover of the time], "She felt like a piece of meat. I know it's an old clich

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Gia's Mother Breaks Her Silence In The National Enquirer 07/17/01

*Exclusive Enquirer Interview: Tragic Beauty's Mom Breaks Her Silence! Stunning beauty Gia attracted many lovers - both men and women. Party girl's 'love affair' with heroin ended her dreams, then AIDS ended her life at 26. Cover girl Gia, shown here in 1980 at age 20 with her mom Kathy, graced some of world's top magazines. Sexy Angelina Jolie's portrayal of Gia in TV movie made Gia's mom Kathy livid. "Gia wasn't the person Angelina played," she says. Signed modeling portrait shows Gia's love for her mom Kathy. "They called her a supermodel, but she was just a kid," says Kathy.*

"The Mother of Gia, the world's first supermodel, has finally broken her silence - to speak out about her daughter's tragic death. In a heartbreakingly frank exclusive Enquirer interview, Kathy Sperr detailed Gia's descent from the cover of Vogue and the fashion catwalks of New York and Europe to a career destroying addiction to heroin and a headline making death at just 26 - one of the first women ever to die of AIDS. "I was with her to the end", she said. "I was reading the 23rd Psalm to her, and as I got to the words, 'Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death,' suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the machines she was hooked up to going haywire - and I knew my baby was gone."

"Gia's fast life and sad times were chronicled in a best selling book and an HBO TV movie. Superstar actress Angelina Jolie starred and received an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of the hottest cover girl of the 1970's. Even though she hated the movie, Kathy, 65, stayed silent about it. "It was torture," she told the Enquirer. "I was livid because Gia wasn't the person Angelina played and I certainly wasn't the horrible mother people wrote about. The hurt will never end - but now it's time to tell the truth." Kathy is also working with the producers of a new documentary, "The Self-Destruction Of Gia," to be released this August.

Off the catwalk, where she made $10,000 a day, the popular young beauty glittered in the celebrity studded spotlight of Studio 54, New York's most glamorous nightclub and a hotbed of drugs and sex. She had a long procession of lovers - many of them women. "She partied with some of the most famous celebrities in the world," said Kathy. "She told me Jack Nicholson gave her the key to his hotel room one night - but she didn't use it."

Gia had been the toast of New York for two years when Kathy first suspected that drugs had taken over her daughter's life. "She was missing work and was irritable," she explained. "I tried to get her help, but no one wanted to deal with heroin addicts. Addiction experts told me, 'You can't help her - just save yourself.' Kathy tried to counsel Gia herself - to no avail. By 1984 Gia hit bottom. Her career was in ruins ... Kathy finally persuaded her to go into rehab.

It was June 1986 and Gia had been diagnosed with AIDS. Within five months the once brightest flame in the fashion world would be extinguished forever. "AIDS had always been in the back of my mind because of her using needles - but she was a woman and back then AIDS didn't happen to women," said Kathy. "We sat in the park and talked. We both knew she wasn't long for this world. Gia suddenly blurted out, 'I overdosed three times - why did God save me then, only to have me go like this?' After that, with every breath you could see her slipping away."

"Gia's face was beautiful to the end. She'd gotten a renewed faith in God. She had a portrait of Jesus pinned to her bedroom door. Just before she was hooked up to life support four weeks before her death, Gia turned to her mother and spoke her last words. "She said, 'I think I'm going to see HIM tonight,' said Kathy. I said, No, no, stay here for Mommy. But I knew she was leaving me."

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From Gia's Last Cosmo Cover Appearance April 1982 by Lisa Interollo

"A model has to create moods," says twenty two year old, Philadelphia born Gia, whose strikingly successful four year career already qualifies her as an expert on the subject. "You have to be careful not to get stuck in a mood - emotions have trends just like fashion." With a wry half smile playing on her lips, Gia goes on to confess that getting into the spirit of a shoot hasn't always been easy. "How am I supposed to feel beautiful if they give me an ugly dress, plastic jewelry and an atrocious hairdo that's so tight it could cause brain damage?" she demands, her dark eyes flashing mischievously. "You have to be a magician and make it work," Gia continues. "Sometimes I've felt like running out of a shoot - I had to contain myself - but the pictures turned out nice. Often the idea that you don't look good is all in your head."

Imagining Gia not looking good is virtually impossible - her natural attractiveness awes: even in jeans, she turns almost as many heads as a presidential motorcade. What beauty tips does this heavenly creature have for us mortals? To maintain her weight at 120 lbs., 5'11" [note from webmaster: Gia's height was often mis-quoted, see below for details] Gia eats mostly fruits and nuts - and fasts occasionally on juices. "Stay away from TV," she cautions. "It has non stop junk food ads and everything looks great."

After a shoot, Gia uses Diane von Furstenberg makeup remover, than dabs astringent to close pores. Not surprisingly being on magazine covers throughout the world brings problems as well as pleasures. "Old friends look at you differently," Gia muses. "They don't see you as their sixth grade chum, they see you as an ideal of fashion." She pauses, lights a cigarette, then proceeds in a lower voice. "It's hard to live up to that image. When I get out of work, I throw on a T shirt, jeans and my sneaks just to get back down to earth." When not posing in front of the camera, she ponders life after modeling. "I want a job where I can be out of the limelight making things happen, possibly cinematography," Gia says. "Modeling is a short gig - unless you want to be jumping out of washing machines when you're thirty!"

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From Vanity Fair Magazine. The Prodigal Beauty by Stephen Fried:

In the late 70's early 80's Gia was a $100,000 a year super model, but a wanton life style of drugs and partying would soon destroy her. By 1986 Gia was an anonymous welfare patient dying of AIDS.

When she was photographed for Vogue in May 1979 with Patti Hansen, ... Gia's figure was unbeatable. Even among the professionally beautiful, Gia was considered special, more an inspiration, a thing of beauty, than a working mannequin.

Gia dressed street chic way before its time, said Scavullo's fashion editor, Sean Byrnes. And she's the one who brought that look right into Vogue. Vogue was willing to give her work even though she had pulled the ultimate stunt: she had walked out on Avedon.

Whether posing in Yves Saint Laurent for Denis Piel or giving Avedon some attitude for Gianni Versace's spring 1980 campaign, Gia was a captivating image.

With the all expenses paid travel and the free clothes, there wasn't much to spend money on except dinners, drugs and gifts.

She couldn't satisfy herself ... and she was very very aggressive. You couldn't room her with another girl. If you did, she made advances.

"That thing on her hand" quickly became an industry metaphor for what Gia had done to herself. It was a self inflicted stigma.

By 1980 Gia was a superstar living in the fast lane. Her appointment book from that year notes her return from a successful assignment in St. Barts and contains a misspelled reminder to "Get Heroin".

The 19 year old Cindy Crawford was quickly nicknamed "Baby Gia" for delivering something close to "the look" but without all the aggravation.

Gia's final magazine cover. Scavullo had to conceal the tracks on her arms and hands.

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Gia's American Vogue Debut Issue

October 1978

lots of pictures, has the famous "dead" shot"

November 1978

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Gia stars in Helmut Newton's infamous photo layout as the epitome of the "fem fatale"

Paris Vogue March 1979

The three fence shots and the Versace ad are by Chris Von Wangenheim and more!

American Vogue January 1979

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Cover and Fashion Feature, Guide To The New Daring, photographed by Alex Chatelain

UK Vogue April 1979

This issue features the famous Dior ad by Chris Von Wangenheim

American Vogue September 1979

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Evening...A World Apart, the New York Spring Collections, photographer Chris Von Wangenheim

American Vogue February 1979

Beautiful Cover in the lyrca bodysuit

American Cosmopoliton April 1979