środa, 31 sierpnia 2011

Gia

"In a sense, we are all style icons" NN



Gia Marie Carangi (January 29, 1960 – November 18, 1986) was an American fashion model during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Carangi is considered by some to be the first supermodel.

Carangi was featured on the cover of fashion magazines, including Vogue, April 1, 1979; Vogue Paris, April 1979; American Vogue, August 1980; Vogue Paris, August 1980; Italian Vogue, January 1981; and several issues of Cosmopolitan between 1979 and 1982.

After she became addicted to heroin, Carangi's modeling career rapidly declined. She later became infected with HIV and died at the age of 26. Her death was not widely publicized and few people in the fashion industry knew of it. Carangi is thought to be one of the first famous women to die of AIDS.Gia, a biographical film starring Angelina Jolie, debuted on HBO in 1998.













Carangi was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the third and youngest child of Joseph Carangi, a restaurant owner, and Kathleen Adams, a homemaker. She had two older brothers. Her father is Italian, and her mother is of Irish and Welsh ancestry. Joseph and Kathleen had an unstable, violent marriage, and Kathleen abandoned the family when Carangi was eleven years old. Those who knew her blamed her "fractured childhood" for the instability and drug-dependence that stilted her adult life. She was described as "needy and manipulative" by relatives who recalled her as spoiled and shy as a child and a "mommy’s girl" who did not receive the motherly attention that she desired.

In her adolescent years, Carangi found the attention she sought from other teenage girls, befriending them by sending flowers.While in 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. A friend of Carangi described her "tomboy persona," describing her relaxed openness about her sexuality as reminiscent of the character Cay in the 1985 film Desert Hearts. Carangi and her "bi-try Bowie-mad" friends hung out in Philadelphia’s gay clubs and bars. Though she associated with the lesbian community, she did not want to take up "the accepted lesbian style".

Carangi was diagnosed with AIDS, which was a newly recognized disease at the time. As her condition worsened, she was transferred to Philadelphia's Hahnemann University Hospital. Her mother stayed with her day and night, allowing virtually no visitors.[citation needed]

On November 18, 1986, aged 26, Carangi died of AIDS-related complications. Her closed-casket funeral (recommended by the funeral director due to the ravages of AIDS) was held on November 21 at a small funeral home in Philadelphia. Nobody from the fashion world attended. However, weeks later, Francesco Scavullo, Carangi's friend and confidant, sent a mass card when he heard the news.

Source: wikipedia

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