Gia Marie Carangi (January 29, 1960November 18, 1986) was an American supermodel, considered by some to be the first supermodel. In 2023, Harper's Bazaar ranked her 15th among the greatest supermodels in the 1980s. She was featured on the cover of numerous magazines, including multiple editions of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, and appeared in advertising campaigns for fashion houses including Armani, Dior, Versace and Yves Saint Laurent.

After Carangi became addicted to heroin, her career rapidly declined, which ultimately led her to quit modeling in 1983. In 1986, at age 26, she died of AIDS. Believed to have contracted it from a contaminated needle, she became one of the early notable women to die of the virus.

In her adolescent years, Carangi found the attention she sought from other teenage girls, befriending them by sending flowers. While attending Abraham Lincoln High School, Carangi bonded with "the Bowie kids", a group of obsessive David Bowie fans who emulated Bowie's "defiantly weird, high-glam" style. Carangi was drawn to Bowie for his fashion preferences and his ambiguous gender play and outspoken bisexuality. One of Carangi's friends later spoke of her "tomboy persona", describing her relaxed openness about her sexuality as reminiscent of the character Cay in the film Desert Hearts (1985). Carangi and her "bi-try Bowie-mad" friends hung out in Philadelphia's gay clubs and bars. Though she is associated with the lesbian community, she did not want to take up "the accepted lesbian style." Carangi moved to New York City at the age of 17, where she signed with Wilhelmina Models. Her first major shoot, published in October 1978, was with top fashion photographer Chris von Wangenheim, who had her pose nude behind a chain-link fence with makeup artist Sandy Linter. Carangi immediately became infatuated with Linter and pursued her, though the relationship never became stable. By the end of 1978, her first year in New York, Carangi was already a well-established model. Of her quick rise to prominence, described by Vogue as "meteoric", Carangi was earning half a million dollars in a year at the height of her career. Carangi was featured on the cover of many fashion magazines, including the April 1979 issue of British Vogue, the April 1979 and August 1980 issues of Vogue Paris, the August 1980 issue of Vogue, the February 1981 issue of Vogue Italia, and multiple issues of Cosmopolitan between 1979 and 1982.

A regular at Studio 54 and the Mudd Club, Carangi usually used cocaine in clubs. After her agent, mentor and friend Wilhelmina Cooper, died of lung cancer in March 1980, a devastated Carangi began using drugs and developed an addiction to heroin. Carangi's addiction soon began to affect her work; she had violent temper tantrums, walked out of photo shoots to buy drugs, and fell asleep in front of the camera. Scavullo recalled a fashion shoot with Carangi in the Caribbean when "she was crying, she couldn't find her drugs. I literally had to lay her down on her bed until she fell asleep." During one of her final location shoots for American Vogue, Carangi had red bumps in the crooks of her elbows where she had injected heroin. Despite airbrushing, some of the photos, as published in the November 1980 issue, reportedly still showed visible needle marks.

In November 1980, Carangi left Wilhelmina Models and signed with Ford Models, but she was dropped within weeks. By then, her career was in a steep decline. Modeling offers soon ceased and her fashion industry friends, including Sandy Linter, refused to speak to her, fearing their association with her would harm their careers. In an attempt to quit using drugs, she moved back to Philadelphia with her mother and stepfather in February 1981. Carangi underwent a 21-day detox program, but her sobriety was short-lived. She was arrested in March 1981 after she drove into a fence in a suburban neighborhood. After a chase with police, she was taken into custody where it was later determined she was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine. After her release, Carangi briefly signed with a new agency, Legends, and worked sporadically, mainly in Europe.

In late 1981, although still using drugs, Carangi was determined to make a comeback in the fashion industry and signed with Elite Model Management. While some clients refused to work with her, others were willing to hire her because of her past status as a top model. Scavullo photographed her for the April 1982 cover of Cosmopolitan, her last cover appearance for an American magazine.

In December 1985, Carangi was admitted to Warminster General Hospital in Warminster, Pennsylvania with bilateral pneumonia. A few days later, she was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex. Carangi was hospitalized in October 1986, feeling weak.

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Music videos

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Legacy

Carangi's rise to fame as an androgynous brunette in an industry full of blue-eyed blondes is believed to have started heroin chic. Lisa Fonssagrives, Dorian Leigh, Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Cheryl Tiegs and Janice Dickinson. Model Cindy Crawford, who rose to prominence the year Carangi died, was referred to as "Baby Gia" because of her resemblance to Carangi. Crawford later recalled, "My agents took me to all the photographers who liked Gia: Albert Watson, Francesco Scavullo, Bill King. Everyone loved her look so much that they gladly saw me."

Carangi's life has been the subject of several works. A biography of Carangi by Stephen Fried titled Thing of Beauty—taken from the first line of John Keats' famous poem Endymion—was published in 1993. Gia, a biographical film starring Angelina Jolie, debuted on HBO in 1998. Jolie won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance, among other accolades. A documentary titled The Self-Destruction of Gia, released in 2003, showcased footage of Carangi, contemporary interviews with Carangi's family and former colleagues, including Sandy Linter, and footage of actress-screenwriter Zoë Lund, herself a heroin addict, who had been commissioned to write a screenplay based upon Carangi's life at the time of her own death of drug-related causes in 1999.

Carangi is commemorated on the AIDS Memorial Quilt on block #5949, block #3505, and block #4113.

Designers and brands represented

  • Armani
  • Bloomingdale's
  • Citicorp
  • Cutex
  • Christian Dior
  • Perry Ellis
  • Diane von Fürstenberg
  • Lancetti
  • Levi's
  • Maybelline
  • Yves Saint Laurent
  • Versace
  • Vidal Sassoon