Requiem for a Supermodel, on Two Channels

Eight years after author Stephen Fried first chronicled the short, sad life of ‘70s model Gia Carangi in “Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia,” two networks are featuring dueling documentaries about her career, heroin addiction and death at 26 from AIDS.

On Sunday, E! Entertainment Television offers a one-hour docudrama, “Gia: The E! True Hollywood Story.” The episode includes interviews with Carangi’s brothers, Michael and Joe, as well as fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo. The show airs at 9 p.m.

At 10 p.m. Monday, ABC offers “Vanished: Shooting Star,” a one-hour special that includes outtakes from Carangi’s only television interview--with ABC’s “20/20.” Scavullo also lends his insights about the beauty who was said to be one of the first women to die of AIDS. The ill-fated model’s life was also dramatized in the 1998 HBO movie “Gia,” starring Angelina Jolie.

Carangi was one of the first openly gay models, and she introduced a sultry, androgynous look that resonates on catwalks today. Her story is a cautionary tale about the dangerous mix of sudden fame and drugs set against a high-fashion background.

Though she was a highly successful model who appeared on the cover of Cosmopolitan and worked with top photographers, Carangi died in near obscurity in 1986 and left little record of her groundbreaking career. Researchers from Fried to those who worked on the documentaries are still daunted by the fleeting nature of her success: Very few photographs of Carangi remain.

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Never let it be said that Brooke Boles didn’t do her part to beautify the bandage. Boles is a 20-year-old fashion entrepreneur and budding philanthropist who cut adhesive strips from faux-fur zebra, leopard and glittery denim fabric and called them Boo-Boos. Unlike the neon or cartoon varieties available in drugstores, Boo-Boos are meant to be worn as a fashion accessory--and not necessarily over wounds (the strips aren’t sterile anyway).

Boles, a Pepperdine University public relations major, is donating a portion of the proceeds to support breast cancer research at the City of Hope National Medical Center and the Beckman Research Institute. She is vice president of Hollywood Hope, a chapter of City of Hope for young entertainment industry professionals. Six-packs of her stylish strips sell for $4 at stores such as Fred Segal Essentials, Jennifer Kaufman, Notorious and select Nordstrom stores.

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Deserts aren’t often thought of as rich sources of scent, but Aveda found inspiration for its new Desert Pure-Fumes fragrances in blooms from the Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree National Park. Without crushing a single petal, scientists waved a high-tech wand near the blossoms, captured their essences and re-created the scents--Dune Primrose, Sand Verbena and Joshua Tree--in a laboratory from natural oils.