Fashion & Beauty

Girl interrupted

Stunner Gia Carangi died at 26 of HIV-related complications. (© Lance Staedler/CORBIS OUTLINE)

Fashion director Jade Hobson took her customary position at the Vogue photo shoot — directly behind the photographer Francesco Scavullo, in front of the models and using her trusty binoculars to zoom in on every detail.

“I was looking at Gia [Carangi], and I could see the track marks on her arms,” says Hobson, interviewed in the new HBO documentary about the drug-addicted supermodel, who died in 1986.

Hobson, who worked for the magazine between 1971 and 1988, recalls the moment in 1980.

“Gia looked great and, you know, I feel somewhat responsible,” she continues. “The photographers, the whole industry [colluded in] using these girls when we were aware of the heavy, heavy drug use. We maybe exploited these girls because it also brought a certain look to the photographs.”

Philadelphia-born Carangi died at 26 of HIV-related complications, most likely after sharing needles while injecting heroin. The melancholic bisexual, a Vogue and Cosmopolitan cover girl between 1979 and 1982, was famously portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the 1998 HBO biopic “Gia.”

While many in the fashion world claim the troubled party girl would have been a casualty in any profession, Hobson is not so sure. “A lot of these girls were kids,” she says. “With a little hair, makeup . . . we made them into something they weren’t. We created a monster.”

Meanwhile, supermodel Kim Alexis, from Buffalo, NY, who was born the same year as Carangi and is now 52, told The Post how the addict “mislaid” her drugs when they were on assignment with Scavullo on St. Barts. “She was my roommate and she lost her heroin at JFK Airport and was going through withdrawal,” says Alexis, who today is a motivational speaker based in Florida.

But former model Pat Cleveland, now 60, who spent time with her crowd at Studio 54, says Carangi’s tragic fate was not unusual. “She was just a normal girl who liked to get stoned,” Cleveland told The Post. “But she had no self-control and was just a sensuous kind of person.

“There were many Gias. She was in the news, but there were many of them. [They were] suicidal when fashion got too much for them.”

jridley@nypost.com