Marianna Simnett’s pendant GIA depicts a female torso pressed into a chain-link fence. Rendered in five iterations, each has a different metal and finish. Simnett’s design was inspired by the pioneering queer supermodel Gia Carangi and her lover, makeup artist Sandy Linter. The two met on the set of a Vogue editorial shoot with Chris von Wangenheim in 1978 when, as Linter recalls, Carangi “took her feet and threw them over the desk and picked up my punk sunglasses, […] folded her arms and stared.” Their bond was profound and immediate, quickly sparking an after-hours photoshoot in which they posed nude against a chain-link fence. These portraits captured the raw, queer, and unapologetic force of Carangi, whose meteoric rise to fame was cut short by addiction and AIDS, while also picturing the tender beginnings of a love that would steady her during those tumultuous years. Juxtaposing tender flesh with the industrial harshness of chain-link fencing, Simnett’s pendant condenses the passion of Gia and Linter’s story into a talisman that holds dear the beauty, brutality, and excess of love.

To accompany the pendant Simnett and her partner, artist and model Eliza Douglas have recreated von Wangenheim’s iconic portraits of Carangi and Linter. Unlike the original high-contrast black-and-white studio shoot, Simnett and Douglas’ haunting, guerrilla-style reinterpretation is shot outdoors in New York City. Illuminated by a bright spotlight, a couple emerges from pitch blackness in the center of the frame. The intensity of their mutual gaze is amplified by the use of double exposure, which imbues the image with a fleeting sense of tenderness and melancholy.

The photograph was shot by the New York-based artist Brittany Nelson, whose works draw parallels between space exploration and queer experience through shared themes of loneliness, isolation, and coded language.