Photo: Helmut Newton
Photo: Chris von Wangenheim (Gia Carangi & Sandy Linter)
Photo: Chris von Wangenheim (Gia Carangi & Sandy Linter)
"Γιαγιά, είμαι Non-Binary" - Ερασιτεχνικό Ντοκιμαντέρ
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One of the earliest openly lesbian supermodels was Gia Carangi, who had a notorious addiction to heroin and died at only 26 years old in 1986 due to an AIDS-related illness. Best known as the basis for the HBO television movie Gia, in which openly bisexual actress Angelina Jolie played the drug-addicted model, Carangi made a huge splash in the fashion industry in the late 1970s for her “ethnic” look, which was particularly unusual at a time when the top models were all-American blondes such as Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley.
Born to a working-class family in Philadelphia—her father owned a hoagie restaurant—Carangi’s parents divorced when she was a child. She moved to New York when she was 18 to pursue modeling and found instant success, soon appearing on the covers of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, and in ads for the top designers of the time, including Diane von Furstenberg, Armani and Dior.
Known for her street smarts and favoring jeans and cowboy boots over the designer clothes that other models wore, Carangi was also known to often carry a knife with her. She once reportedly announced herself at the Wilhelmina modeling agency by carving her name into the receptionist’s desk with her switchblade.
Her first major fashion shoot took place in October 1978 with photographer Chris von Wangenheim. After wrapping the day’s shoot, he asked her to pose nude behind a chain link fence with makeup assistant Sandy Linter, and the shot has since become a legendary one that was later reproduced in the HBO film.
During the shoot Carangi was immediately drawn to Linter, and she soon began to pursue her.
Later on, Linter recalled, “She sent flowers to me, and she really sort of courted me, which I thought was adorable. Eventually I did go out with her. She’s the type of person at that time, and anyone who knew her at the time can tell you, if she showed up on your doorsteps and you opened the door and she got in your apartment she was there, that’s it.”
But Carangi’s relationship with Linter never became a stable one, though it may have been one of her better known lesbian relationships.
During the height of her career in the late 1970s, Carangi was a regular at nightclubs such as Studio 54 and took part in the escapist drug culture that characterized that pre-AIDS era. In 1980, her agent, Wilhelmina Cooper, who had become something of a surrogate mother to Carangi, was diagnosed with lung cancer and died. Carangi coped with her loss by turning to drugs, and began a downward spiral that eventually resulted in her contracting the AIDS virus.
Though Carangi, through the assistance of her friends and family, did enter several drug treatment centers, she was unable to kick the habit. She also began dating a woman who was addicted to heroin and who, unfortunately, encouraged Carangi’s addiction. When photographer Chris von Wangenheim, who had become her good friend, died in an automobile accident in 1981, Carangi was devastated. Her behavior became erratic and she was known to leave a photo shoot while wearing the clothes in order to get her next heroin fix.
By 1982, Carangi was no longer being booked in the U.S., and she turned to the nascent German fashion industry to attempt to make a living. But when she was caught with drugs on a shoot in Africa, she was sent home, and at the urging of her family she entered another drug treatment center. After six months she was released from the program and returned to Philadelphia, where it seemed as though she was about to restart her life. But shortly after her return to Philadelphia she went to Atlantic City where she turned to prostitution in order to procure heroin, and eventually contracted AIDS.
By the time she died in a hospital in November 1986, the fashion world had moved on, with new models like Cindy Crawford—who was dubbed “baby Gia” because of her resemblance to Carangi—becoming the new elite.
In Stephen Fried’s biography, Thing of Beauty, Carangi is portrayed as a passionate but misguided woman who lived openly as a lesbian. Though she did have relationships with men, it is largely understood that her primary sexual and emotional relationships were with women. When talking about Carangi after filming Gia, Angelina Jolie stressed, “She was always that way. When she was about 13 her mother found letters she had written to girls in school.”
Fried argues that despite evidence that Carangi was gay, many have refused to believe that she was gay simply because she did not look like a stereotypical lesbian.
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