Again shot by Scavullo, the memorable cover featured a sultry Gia wearing a yellow gravity-defying swimsuit. Gia’s second Cosmopolitan cover was the July 1979 issue. Her first Cosmo cover sold spectacularly, as did the brown Norma Kamali unitard in which she appeared. A few weeks earlier, she had appeared on the April 1979 cover of the British edition of Vogue. The Cosmo cover was actually Gia’s first major cover. Editor Helen Gurley Brown normally preferred that Scavullo shoot 12 different models each year, but after seeing the results of this shoot, she immediately ordered another Gia cover. Gia’s first appearance on the cover of Cosmopolitan was the April 1979 cover, which featured a shot of the supermodel wearing a Lycra bodysuit. Here’s a look back at each of Gia’s covers for Cosmo. She had the perfect body for modelling perfect eyes, mouth, hair. There is something she had…no other girl has got it. “With her, you got wonderful stuff.… It was like you got candid pictures of her and they were divine. “With most models who move around, you get bad stuff,” Scavullo continued. You had to let her go, you couldn’t direct her.”īut all that didn’t matter, given what Gia brought to the shoot. She jumped around you couldn’t set your lights and you couldn’t hold her still. You got a million pictures that had her head in them. She was like an actress in front of the camera. “She was very candid in front of the camera. “I was mad about her,” Scavullo recalled. She got a voucher for the standard cover fee, which was $100. That session also went well, and the pictures had a good chance of being used. The session went well, and Scavullo booked her again two weeks later for a cover try. Scavullo was quite taken with Gia: she didn’t fit into any of the usual model categories. Gia first met Scavullo through makeup artist Way Bandy, who helped get her first test shoot with the photographer. She was, for a time, the ultimate Cosmo girl. Scavullo considered Gia a muse and featured her on five different Cosmopolitan covers between 19. But her most important covers are her Cosmopolitan covers, each shot by famed photographer Francesco Scavullo (1921–2004), who exclusively shot the magazine covers for more than 30 years. Throughout her short career, she appeared in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and countless other fashion magazines, on the covers of the Italian, British and French editions of Vogue, and even the cover of the all-important, career-defining American Vogue. She later became infected with HIV and died in Philadelphia on November 18, 1986, of AIDS-related complications. Sadly, after Gia became addicted to heroin, her fashion career rapidly declined. By the time Gia was 18, she was making over $100K annually, which made her the highest-paid model at the time…the reason why many in the fashion industry consider her the world’s first supermodel. She worked with the biggest brands (including Diane von Fürstenberg, Christian Dior, Armani and Versace) and with legendary photographers (including Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon and Arthur Elgort), and even starred in the iconic music video for Blondie’s 1980 hit “Atomic,” where she appears jumping and dancing. When she arrived in the city, Gia met with Wilhelmina Cooper, who immediately signed her to the prestigious modelling agency Wilhelmina Models.ĭuring her meteoric rise to the top, Gia redefined the standard of beauty – her dark features disrupted an industry that was dominated by tall, blonde, blue-eyed models. Gia Marie Carangi was born in Philadelphia on January 29, 1960, moved to New York City at the age of 17 and instantly took the fashion industry by storm. The late supermodel Gia appeared on the cover of not just one but five different issues of Cosmopolitan’s US edition. One of the crowning achievements of any model’s career is securing a spot on the cover of a fashion magazine, and during the late 1970s and ’80s, Cosmopolitan was one of the most coveted gigs for any top model.
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