Two years ago, 17 year old Gia Carangi was pushing hoagies in South Philly. Today, she could pull a half million a year as New York's hottest fashion model.
The stereo is screaming in constant concert with the sirens that scour the streets for sinners up where the midnight cowboys ride high, down where the pavements are broken with beggars' dreams, right at the low end of town, where Park Avenue splits into the neon lights of Broadway and the high rent low rises of positively Fourth Avenue. Gia Carangi, a very vulnerable woman of 19, is upstairs in one of those semi fancy apartment buildings slurping a can of Colt .45 malt liquor and talking about her new career, one that will make her one of the most famous faces in the world ...

Right now, except for the music, the apartment is nearly naked. The album is the latest by Blondie, an old New Wave group. The music screeches and the words bounce off the bare walls:

Die young and stay pretty, Deteriorate in your own time
Leave only the best behind, You gotta live fast
Cause it won't last ...

[Gia] is very pale, and in the dark light of the apartment, all you can see on her face is some bright red lipstick and some dark black eyeliner. Her skin is soft and very smooth, almost perfect like a 10 year old's. Her dark brown hair is a mane of coarse cuts and waves, shorter on the top and falling long over her shoulders. Her eyes glow. They are liquid brown. When she gets up off the tiger striped sofa, she is 5'8", but not overpowering. Underneath the tight stretch top with the leather piping, the one she bought at the thrift store on Eighth Street, it's hard to picture the sultry curves of that Lolita like body, the one that got so much response when it appeared on the cover of Cosmo in a bathing suit that didn't cover much of it. "It's all," Gia says, taking a deep breath and pushing the stretch top out far beyond where it had been, "it's all in the lungs. And I have very big lungs." She giggles and puts her long thin fingers over her mouth to keep from laughing.

In March, she will have been working in New York for two years. She had modeled just a couple times while she was still living full time in Philly. She had done a shooting or two for Gimbels. She had been discovered, at age 17, dancing one night at the DCA club, a mostly gay disco. She worked the small jobs at first, until about three months into her career when she met Arthur Elgort, who photographs for Bloomingdale's. She did a job for him and he turned her onto the Vogue people and the Cosmo people and to Scavullo and Avedon, and that was the beginning. "My mother was all for it," [Gia] says. "When she was younger, she always wanted to do it herself. My dad, though, I never got the right vibes from him. Maybe he didn't like the idea that they wanted me to give up my last name. But my mom, she was behind me from the start, even though she knew what a rough life it can be at first."

When she was on top, Whilhelmina [who is handling Gia's career] was making $100,000 a year. A top model can make four or five times that now. ... Of course, not everybody makes it that big. Less than 1% of all listed models rocket to stardom. ... What makes Gia so different, so special, so rich? First of all, she's a beautiful brunette in a world of blondes, Willy, a brunette herself, likes that. But mostly, she's got a fantastically pliable face. "She can be really sophisticated in one shooting," Willy says, "and be a real Lolita type in another. And this will give her a long life span."

The Hollywood Board [where Willy places her top models] is buzzing with calls for Gia as Gia bounces in to check her bookings. "You've really got us going," they tell her pointing to the piles of sheets full of prospective shootings. Gia will have to look at each one of those scrawls and okay it before anything's confirmed. She might cancel out because the shooing doesn't suit her or because she's just not in the mood. That happens. It's a very fickle business, and Gia can be a very fickle girl. Just last month, she canceled two whole weeks worth of bookings because she didn't like the way her hair was cut.

[Regarding the modeling, the actual work itself, Gia explains] "I do as little as I can in the apartment, just get washed and shave my arms and make sure that I have white underwear on." The rest is done at the studio. Gia just sits as other people pamper her. "All you really need, "Gia says, "is a good face and a good mind. And the mind might be the most important part. You gotta get into it. You gotta feel the guy who's shooting and know what he wants. And you've got to concentrate. If you don't, it's just not going to work. And that shows up in the pictures."

At the end of a long day's shooting, Gia usually tries to forget everything and just go home and flop out in bed. She realized early on that she wasn't a disco person. When she goes out at all, it's mainly to the Mudd Club. But sometimes it just doesn't pay to go out. So she'll just pop another top off a Colt .45, lay back on the tiger striped sofa and turn the stereo all way up. Gia smiles and shakes her shoulders as the last cut [from Blondie] blares its final refrain:

Every day you've got to wake up
And disappear behind your makeup,
Hey, I'm livin' in a magazine, Page to page in my teenage dream,
Cause I'm not livin' in the real world. No I'm not livin' in the real world
No more.

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