Thing of Beauty Read online

  “Gia’s story has everything—glamor, glitz, squalor and tragedy.”

  —Liz Smith, syndicated columnist

  At age seventeen, Gia Carangi was working the counter at her father’s Philadelphia luncheonette, Hoagie City. Within a year, Gia was one of the top models of the late 1970s, gracing the covers of Cosmopolitan and Vogue, partying at New York’s Studio 54 and the Mudd Club, and redefining the industry’s standard of beauty. She was the darling of moguls and movie stars, royalty and rockers. Gia was also a girl in pain, desperate for her mother’s approval—and a drug addict on a tragic slide toward oblivion, who started going directly from $ 10,000-a-day fashion shoots to the heroin shooting galleries on New York’s Lower East Side. Finally blackballed from modeling, Gia entered a vastly different world on the streets of New York and Atlantic City, and later in a rehab clinic. At twenty-six, she became one of the first women in America to die of AIDS, a hospital welfare case visited only by rehab friends and what remained of her family.

  Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Gia’s family, lovers, friends, and colleagues, THING OF BFAUTY creates a poignant portrait of an unforgettable character—and a powerful narrative about beauty and sexuality, fame and objectification, mothers and daughters, love and death.

  “Vivid…. The story of Gia Carangi…should be set out among the fashion magazines in modeling agency waiting rooms and any other place where teen-age girls who’ve been called pretty a little too often hang out…. Stephen Fried’s exhaustive account of Gia’s brief life seems to have an important unanswered question on every page: why didn’t anyone help Gia?”

  —The New York Times Book Review

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  “Gia was…cooler than cool, tough and macho before Madonna, Cindy Crawford before there was a Cindy C. But then there was Cindy, who was initially dubbed ‘Baby Gia,’ and soon, no one remembered the original. Without Fried…Gia would have been more than dead; she would have been forgotten….”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Faces come and go, but few cover girls are expelled from Planet Beauty as dramatically as Gia Carangi…. Fried’s nimble reporting loosens every pin and tuck.”

  —Glamour

  “Fried’s portrait of the early days of the AIDS epidemic within the fashion world is compelling. His uncompromising look at how homophobia infected Gia’s life is dramatic…”

  —Lambda Book Report

  “Stephen Fried has done an admirable job reconstructing Gia’s frenzied life…. Fried makes a convincing case, through recording Gia’s travails, that fetching eyes and a killer body are not enough. This is a chilling tale that every pretty, stupid young thing should read.”

  —Boston Globe

  “…A CHILLING PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES.”

  —Playboy

  We have endeavored to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material and to secure permission from copyright holders when required. In the event of any question arising as to the use of any material, we will be pleased to make the necessary corrections in future printings.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 1993 by Stephen Marc Fried

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN 13: 978-0-671-70105-5

  ISBN 13: 978-1-451-67640-2 (eBook)

  ISBN 10: 0-671-70105-3

  First Pocket Books Paperback printing June 1994

  20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Cover photo by Lance Staedler

  Photo inserts conceived, researched, and edited by Vincent Virga; designed by Stanley S. Drate/Folio Graphics, Inc.

  8-page insert credit: Gia’s modeling portfolios courtesy of Elite and the collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine—page two, poster from Helmut Newton show Private Property; page three, American Cosmopolitan tearsheet of Francesco Scavullo cover from Gia’s portfolio; page four, Italian Vogue tearsheet of Renato Grignachi cover from Gia’s portfolio; page five, tearsheet of Dior ad by Chris von Wangenheim, courtesy of Gene Federico; page six, tearsheet of Armani ad by Aldo Fallai from Gia’s portfolio; page seven, American Vogue tearsheet of Richard Avedon cover from Gia’s portfolio; page eight, American Vogue tearsheet of Denis Piel photo from Gia’s portfolio

  16-page insert credits (*asterisks indicate pseudonyms): 1. Jim Graham; 2. from the collection of Rochelle Rosen*; 3. Jim Graham; 4. from the collection of Alice Kensil; 5. from Lincoln High Yearbook, from the collection of Elaine Moon*; 6. Urban Archives, Temple University; 7. from the collection of Nancy Adams; 8. from the collection of Karen Karuza; 9-10. Joe Petrellis; 11. Maurice Tannenbaum; 12. Philadelphia Magazine; 13. collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine; 14. Joan Ruggles; 15. from the collection of Nancy Adams; 16. collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine; 17-18. Lance Staedler; 19. Italian Bazaar tearsheet from Gia’s portfolio; 20. from the collection of Lizzette Kattan; 21. Lizzette Kattan; 22. Ralph Gibson; 23-25. Lizzette Kattan; 26. New York Magazine; 28. Arthur Gordon, from Disco Beauty, published by Simon & Schuster; 29. American Vogue tearsheet; 30. Chris von Wangenheim, from Fashion: Theory, published by Lustrum Press; 31. Lizzette Kattan; 32. Joan Ruggles; 33. collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine; 34. Philadelphia Magazine; 35. David King; 36. WWD; 37. David King; 38-40. WWD; 41. collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine; 42. American Vogue tearsheet from Gia’s portfolio; 43. collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine; 46. from the collection of Rochelle Rosen*; 47. from the collection of Monique Pillard/Elite; 48. American Cosmopolitan; 49. Francesco Scavullo, from Scavullo: Women, published by Simon & Schuster; 50. collection of Kathleen Sperr, courtesy of Philadelphia Magazine; 52-53. from the collection of Dawn Phillips; 54. from the collection of Rochelle Rosen*; 55. from the collection of Dawn Phillips; 56. painting by Joe Eula, from the collection of Lizzette Kattan; 57. Alice Kensil; 58. American Harper’s Bazaar tearsheet

  To my wife, Diane Ayres

  A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

  Its loveliness increases; it will never

  Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

  A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

  Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

  John Keats,

  from Endymion

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Family Matters

  2. The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys

  3. Suffragette City

  4. Mr. Maurice Reinvents Himself

  5. Go-See

  6. Ciao for Now

  7. Model War Zone

  8. Callback

  9. This Year’s Girl

  10. Sustained Fabulousness

  11. Life During Wartime

  12. Bubblegum Habit

  13. Bad Girls

  14. The Conquered Heroine

  15. Under the Boardwalk

  16. Rehab

  17. Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

  18. Beautiful Friend, The End

  Epilogue

  Appendix: Names & Fates

  Acknowledgments & Afterstuff

&nbs
p; Index

  Prologue

  The newsmagazine anchorman thanks a correspondent for his report on “this fascinating subject of near-death experience,” turns to face another camera, and reads the teaser for the upcoming segment of the January 6, 1983, edition of ABC’s 20/20.

  “Next,” he says, “inside the world of the fashion model … a world that is not always as it appears. Right after this.”

  After the commercial, the anchorman introduces reporter Tom Hoving, who presents a report meant to detail “the dark and anxious side” of the modeling business but manages somehow to make the whole enterprise seem extremely glamorous anyway. There’s top model Christie Brinkley being coaxed by a photographer. “Make me chase you,” he’s saying. “Tease, tease. Look at me like you’re naked. That’s it. Fabulous.” After the shooting, Brinkley—the industry’s quintessential blond-haired, blue-eyed California girl—says that she’ll never have to worry about money again.

  “Models can earn two million dollars a year,” Hoving explains in his booming TV-overvoice. “Once you make it, you become a member of an exclusive international club, where the sun always shines, the parties are glowing. A land where there’s no ugliness, no sickness, no poverty. A land where dreams come true and everyone is certified beautiful. The club has special fringe benefits. Top model Apollonia knows them all.”

  “Rolls-Royce, flowers, dresses, limousines, tickets,” lists the Dutch-born Apollonia von Ravenstein, a long-reigning queen of the more specialized, dark-haired, European-exotic look. “I mean, anything you want, anything a woman would want, really, just ask.”

  Flamboyant hairdresser-turned-fashion-photographer Ara Gallant appears, wearing a leather Jeff cap, Mr. Spock sideburns and nearly as much makeup as any of the girls. (In modeling, women are always called “girls.”) He is asked to reflect on why the fashion model has such appeal. “They’ve become a glorified version of what ladies imagine themselves to look like in their fantasy,” Gallant explains. “And they set a kind of standard. Without models, women in general would have no guideline with which to identify. So they’ve become icons, the modern icons.”

  Hoving then takes the viewer through the cattle-call auditions and explains that there are 7,000 girls in New York who “call themselves models”; 1,500 actually work, and of these, 500 are the “so-called ‘glamour guns’” who get most of the good jobs. Because his report is focused on New York, he doesn’t even mention the international farm system for modeling: the untold thousands of girls enrolled in regional schools, or signed up at local agencies in America and Europe.

  Several models attest to how difficult and degrading the grind of traveling and groveling for work can become. Shaggy-haired John Casablancas—the president of Elite, the upstart agency that has recently toppled the decades-old studio system in modeling and, almost overnight, tripled the price of professional prettiness—explains that when and if success finally comes, models “have a moment where they appreciate it very, very much, but it’s very, very short … they get too much too quickly.”

  Then the camera cuts to Francesco Scavullo’s studio on East Sixty-third Street. In the reception area, decades of Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar covers shot by the precious, prolific photographer hang high on the white walls. The girl whose face and “bosom”—as Scavullo would say—appear on some of his more recent covers is in the small dressing room being prepared for a demonstration photo session being staged for the TV cameras. Seated in front of a large makeup mirror, the girl doesn’t squirm a bit as her face is painstakingly primed, painted and powdered for nearly two hours. She has learned to hold still while her naturally beautiful face and hair are made unnaturally beautiful so that the camera—which sees things somewhat differently than the human eye—will capture her as preternaturally beautiful.

  She is Gia. At seventeen, she was a pretty girl from the Northeast section of Philadelphia who worked the counter at her father’s luncheonette, Hoagie City, and never missed a David Bowie concert. At eighteen, she was one of the most promising new faces and figures in modeling, discovered by the agency run by sixties cover girl Wilhelmina Cooper and launched in American Vogue by the most influential fashion photographer of the day, Arthur Elgort. Now, at twenty-two, Gia is a member of the elite group of so-called top models. At any given moment, there are only a dozen or two such girls, who end up splitting most of the very best editorial, advertising and catalog jobs.

  Even among the professionally beautiful, Gia is considered special. She is more like the quintessential painter’s model—an inspiration, a “thing of beauty”—than a working girl, a professional mannequin. A disproportionate number of the beauty and fashion shots she appears in transcend the accepted level of artful commerce and approach the realm of actual photographic art.

  But Gia is legendary in her industry for other reasons, only a few of which can even be mentioned on network television. Her celebrated androgyny is no provocative put-on: the female makeup artist who is brushing Gia’s lips shiny red is the recurring object of her affections. Her rebellious attitude toward the business—no model has ever come so far while appearing to care so little—has alternately outraged and delighted the biggest names in fashion. And her drug problems have been so acute that if she didn’t have that incredible look, she might never work at all: lesser girls have been blackballed for doing once what Gia has managed to get away with many times.

  Behind the scenes, where the world of a fashion model is really not always as it appears, Gia has given new meaning to the industry catchphrase “girl of the moment.” It usually just refers to a model’s popularity among photographers, art directors and ad agencies reaching such a critical mass that her face is suddenly everywhere. But Gia is such a girl of her moment that she is about to become either the face of the eighties, or a poster child for the social ills of the seventies.

  While Gia is being photographed by Scavullo in the background—“Great, like that, turn your head over a bit fabulous, fabulous, laugh, laugh; beautiful, marvelous … smile, if you can smile”—reporter Hoving talks about the supermodel. “A virtual symbol of the bright side and the dark side of modeling,” he calls her.

  “I started working with very good people … I mean all the time, very fast,” Gia says, in a metered tone created by professional voice instructors who are trying to neutralize her unsophisticated Philadelphia accent so she might get into acting. “I didn’t build into a model. I just sort of became one.”

  “Then the troubles began for Gia,” Hoving intones, his post-recorded commentary interspersed with edited interview snippets. “The real world became clouded by illusions.”

  “When you’re young,” Gia tries to explain, “you don’t always … y’know … it’s hard to make [out] the difference between what is real and what is not real.”

  “Particularly when adulated …”

  “Innocent,” she corrects, “and there’s a lot of vultures around you.”

  “She became erratic,” Hoving booms on, “failed to show up for jobs.” Then he turns to Gia. “At one point, you got kind of into the drug scene, didn’t you?”

  “Ummm,” she pauses for a long time, as the reporter and cameraman anxiously wait to see if the loaded question will yield a usable sound bite about a still-taboo subject. Gia has been in front of the camera enough times to know how to dodge the question or spoil the take but, finally, she decides to do neither. “Yes, you could say that I did. It kind of creeps up on you and catches you in a world that’s, y’know, none that anyone will ever know except someone that has been there.”

  “You’re free of it, aren’t you, now?” he asks, even though many on the 20/20 crew believe her to be high on something as she speaks.

  “Oh yes, I am, definitely,” she says. “I wouldn’t be here right now talking to you if I wasn’t, I don’t think.”

  “Are you happy with your success?”

  Gia thinks for a second, running her tongue across her painted lips. “Ummm, yes,
” she says. “I am, I am.”

  “You … hesitated.”

  “Well, I just wanted to think about it,” she quips back, laughing, trying to defuse whatever poignancy her pause has taken on, now that it has been captured on film and can be offered for individual interpretation to each of the program’s fourteen million viewers.

  “No, I am happy with it,” she says.

  “Didja ever do it for money?” asked the tall, haggard young woman, not even bothering to brush away the long hair that covered her red eyes and broken-out cheeks.

  “Do what?” asked the nurse, a big-boned woman who sat crosslegged and shoeless at the opposite end of the bed—a posture she found put the more depressed patients at ease.

  “Y’know, sex. Ever do it for money?”

  “No, of course not. Why?”

  “I have,” said the woman, lighting a Marlboro. “I’ve turned a lotta tricks. For drugs, y’know. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

  The nurse guessed that the patient was just trying to shake her up, throw her off guard. But she didn’t doubt the truth of the statement. The young woman’s body had been violated in half a dozen different ways. She had been addicted to heroin for a long time and had attempted suicide with a massive overdose only weeks before. The bruises on her upper body suggested that she had been badly beaten up. She had recently been raped. And she was suffering the effects of exposure from sleeping outside in the rain several nights before.

  The young woman had no visible means of support. She had registered as a welfare patient in the emergency room of this small, suburban hospital outside of Philadelphia. There was a mother who came to visit sometimes, but otherwise the girl seemed very much alone. Only twenty-six, she was one of the youngest street people the hospital had ever admitted. Turning tricks was probably the only way she could survive.