The Sad Life of Gia Carangi: The Original Supermodel Who Died of AIDS Alone at 26
*The Sad Life of Gia Carangi: The Original Supermodel Who Died of AIDS Alone at 26*
Before Naomi. Before Cindy. Before Linda. There was Gia.
Gia Marie Carangi was born on the 29th of January, 1960, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — the daughter of a hoagie shop owner who became, by the age of eighteen, the highest-paid model in the world. She appeared on the cover of Vogue in its American, British, and Paris editions. She shot campaigns for Armani, Dior, Versace, and Yves Saint Laurent. She appeared in Blondie's iconic 1980 music video for "Atomic." Fashion historians consider her the world's first supermodel — the woman who invented the template that every model who came after her built their career on.
She was also openly gay at a time when that required real courage. She lost the closest thing she had to a mother figure when her agent Wilhelmina Cooper died of lung cancer in March 1980 — and she never recovered from it.
By 1983, her career was over. By 1985, she had been diagnosed with AIDS. On the 18th of November, 1986, she died at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. She was twenty-six years old. Not one person from the fashion world attended her funeral.
This video tells the full story — verified, sourced, and told without sensationalism. Her childhood in Northeast Philadelphia. The mother who abandoned her at eleven. The meteoric rise. The heroin addiction that followed Wilhelmina Cooper's death. The failed comebacks. The AIDS diagnosis. And the industry that consumed her completely and walked away without looking back.
Cindy Crawford was called "Baby Gia" when she rose to replace her. The supermodel era Gia invented continued without her.
She deserved better. This video is the story she deserved to have told.
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