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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.
It
wasn’t until Jenny Shimizu entered the fashion scene
in the mid-1990s that we had a well-known model who actually
looked like she might be a lesbian. Famously discovered outside
a Los Angeles club with her motorcycle and her girlfriend, Shimizu
is best known for her ads for Calvin Klein (particularly the
cologne CK One, which was marketed as an androgynous fragrance).
She
also pursued an acting career, appearing in the film Foxfire
with Angelina Jolie in 1996, a job that led to a brief relationship
with Jolie.
In
1997 Shimizu reached what many in the modeling industry consider
to be the pinnacle of modeling by being photographed by Richard
Avedon for the Pirelli calendar, a promotional vehicle for the
Italian Pirelli tire company. Though
the calendar is not sold or widely distributed, it is one of
the most elite calendars produced in the world, and nearly every
“supermodel” has appeared in the calendar, including Naomi Campbell,
Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford and Heidi Klum.
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