Outrageous Fortune: Nats, August, and Gigi Gorgeous Getty Are Not Your Typical Old-Money Scions (2024)

Natalia Getty’s wedding, in Montecito, California, on July 12, had all the trappings one would expect for the marriage of a great-­granddaughter of oil magnate J. Paul Getty, who was the richest man in America, if not the world, before his death in 1976. Two hundred twenty formally clad guests gathered on the manicured lawn of the Rosewood Miramar Beach Hotel, which overlooks the Santa Barbara Channel. Pink and white rose petals were strewn everywhere as a violinist drew her bow and commenced the ceremony with the opening notes of Céline Dion’s “Because You Loved Me.”

But the Gettys have always been one of America’s most unconventional dynasties, and Nats, as the 27-year-old is known, upheld that nonconformist tradition as the wedding unfolded. Wearing a white suit with tailcoat that she designed herself, she waited by the altar with her mother Ariadne Getty, 57—granddaughter of J. Paul Getty—and Ariadne’s partner, music producer Louie Rubio, as her fiancée, Gigi Lazzarato (a.k.a. Gigi Gorgeous), marched down a white velvet carpet toward her, resplendent in a flowing white custom gown by Michael Costello and accompanied by her father David Lazzarato.

Gigi, 27, who was born in Toronto as Gregory Lazzarato, gained worldwide fame (she has nearly 8 million followers across various social media platforms, including YouTube) as she documented her gender transition and emergence as an LGBTQ role model.

Other legacy billionaire clans might have raised an eyebrow at Gigi marrying in, but Nats’s family welcomed her with open arms. Nats’s only sibling, fashion designer August, 25 (also gay and, like his sister, liberally tattooed), designed the embellished, form-fitting white silk gown that Gigi wore to the rehearsal dinner the night before.

He arrived at that event only minutes before it was to begin, having raced to Montecito from Paris, where he had just presented a collection of haute couture in the Grand Jardin of the Hôtel Ritz. Jumping into a waiting limo at LAX, he was driven directly to the dinner, changing clothes somewhere on the 101. “A leg out on one side of the freeway, an arm out the other side,” he says.

After the couple exchanged rings and kissed and were pronounced Gigi and Nats Getty, the guests (including Caitlin Jenner) dined on pan-roasted filet mignon. Video toasts to the newlyweds touched on both the personal and public ramifications of the marriage, this union of old money and new attitude. “Show us how it’s done!” Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry boomed. “I’m proud of you and I’m proud of Gigi,” said California governor Gavin Newsom, Nats’s godfather.

No one was more ecstatic than Ari, as the siblings’ mother is known. “My happiness is complete,” she said. Long an exceptionally private person, she has in recent years emerged as not just one of the most generous philanthropists supporting LGBTQ causes (through the Ariadne Getty Foundation) but one of the most vocal and activist. Much of L.A.’s queer community affectionately calls her Mama G, and it’s not unusual to find a goodly contingent—including some very fabulous drag queens—hanging out at 4 a.m. at her 6,000-square-foot apartment atop the Montage Beverly Hills.

She also finds time to act as CEO of both of her children’s thriving fashion brands. While August and Nats share many qualities, when it comes to the type of clothing they design they diverge considerably. The outgoing, ever-tanned August is all about big time glamour. Extravagant couture gowns he designs under his label, August Getty Atelier, are worn by the likes of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Nats, intense and porcelain-skinned, is a lifelong tomboy. At her label, Strike Oil, she is giving hoodies and other staples of streetwear an art-infused, unisex spin, and they’re being snapped up by such cool customers as Halsey and Bella Thorne. Gigi, for her part, is equally industrious. In November she launched Gigi Gorgeous Cosmetics, a 14-piece line, with Ipsy, the beauty subscription service.

All this productivity and domestic happiness might surprise those whose knowledge of the Gettys is limited to recent Holly­wood productions, namely Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World and Danny Boyle’s Trust, a series on FX. Both plumbed the grisly details of the 1973 Rome kidnapping of Ari’s elder brother, John Paul Getty III, who had an ear gruesomely cut off before he was released after six months. (He died in 2011.)

The family members felt the depictions were both mean-spirited and highly inaccurate. The story of the Getty clan, in fact, is much more wide-­ranging and inspiring.

Patriarch J. Paul Getty, born in Minneapolis in 1892, began making his fortune as a wildcatter in the oil fields of Oklahoma and stealthily built up a vast petroleum empire. To the world at large he was relatively unknown until 1957, when Fortune magazine named him “the Richest American.” His wealth, estimated at the time to be between $700 million and $1 billion, dwarfed the assets of the Mellons, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and other established dynasties.

Fame followed, and so did trophy real estate. Getty purchased Sutton Place, a 16th-century Tudor mansion outside London, which would be his home for the rest of his life. By this time he had ended the last of his five relatively short marriages, which produced five sons: George (1924–1973), from the first marriage; J. Ronald (1929–2009), from the third; Paul Jr.(1932–2003; he’s Ariadne’s father) and Gordon (born in 1933 and going strong today in San Francisco with his wife Ann), both from the fourth; and Timothy (1946–1958), from the fifth.

So the Getty family tree is quite a complicated one. Between them the sons have had 19 children, 17 of whom survive. They, in turn, have produced a generation of about 40 Gettys (the great-­grandchildren of J. Paul Getty). Geographically, they live or have lived on almost every continent.

Over the decades the media have frequently turned the Gettys into a poster family for dysfunction. In addition to the kidnapping, other family members have suffered tragedies, including the drug-related deaths of J. Paul Getty’s oldest son, George F. Getty, in 1973, and his grandson Andrew Getty, in 2015.

And, following the death of J. Paul Getty, the family was thrust into the spotlight thanks to the staggering and unexpected bequest he made—nearly $750 million—to his namesake museum in Malibu, a replica of a Roman villa. (The biggest cultural donation in history, it later financed the construction of the Getty Center in Brentwood, which was designed by Richard Meier.) A few years later, the $10 billion sale of Getty Oil to Texaco (then the biggest corporate acquisition in history) led to epic litigation, which sparked battles between some family members over control of the family trust, which was at the time said to be worth $4 billion.

The Gettys of today are no less active, creative, or philanthropic than their forefathers. Ariadne’s England- and Rome-based brother, Mark, co-founded Getty Images, the world’s leading online photo resource; their bicoastal sister, Aileen (who was married in the 1980s to Christopher Wilding, a son of Elizabeth Taylor), was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and has since worked for various causes, including climate change, through her Aileen Getty Foundation.

Balthazar Getty, the actor and musician, is the son of their late brother, Paul III. He and his wife Rosetta, who produces her own eponymous fashion line, are raising a lively group of four children in Los Angeles; they see Ari, August, and Nats often. Far-flung around the globe as they are, the younger Gettys are a close-knit bunch for the most part, and as they come of age many of them are forging interesting paths for themselves. San Francisco–based Ivy (25, a granddaughter of Gordon) is pursuing a career as a painter, while in London, Isabel (26, a granddaughter of Ronald) has received acclaim as a singer and Sabine (34, the wife of Mark’s son Joseph) runs a celebrated jewelry line, Sabine G.

If there was a Getty curse, as some have suggested over the years, it seems as if it has been dispelled. Maybe that’s due to vast improvements in parenting styles since the days of the patriarch, who was never what you’d call a hands-on dad to his five sons. Ari didn’t tell her children they were Gettys until they were about 10. They were brought up as August and Nats Williams, with the surname of their father, Justin Williams, an actor whom Ari divorced 15 years ago. “I wanted them to grow up without the weight of the name,” she says. On school field trips to the J. Paul Getty Museum, the kids were unaware that they had any connection to it. (In retrospect, Nats says she should have had a clue: “My mother was always the chaperone on those trips.”)

The kids began learning about their legacy around 2000, when Ari moved the family from Los Angeles to rural Buckinghamshire, England, to be near her father, who had become a British citizen and was knighted by the queen for his extraordinary philanthropy. After his death, in 2003, they remained in England for a few years, then moved back to L.A, at first living in a 1,200-square-foot house in Brentwood. “It was a magic little place with a creek running behind it. I didn’t raise them with any sense of entitlement,” she tells me over mint tea in the garden of the Mandarin Oriental in Paris, just before August’s couture show in July.

“Fashion was my first language,” August says a few weeks later. He is clad in a black sleeveless T-shirt, jeans, and boots; we’re inside a sprawling building in Culver City where he and his sister produce their respective lines. “I was kind of the oddball in the family. I have a fascination with an absurd amount of glam. No one knows where it came from. I’m from a family of tomboys.” (His stylish mother favors tailored jackets, pants, and sneakers, albeit ones by Chanel or Giuseppe Zanotti.)

According to family lore, August was a baby when he began designing his first gowns, by draping napkins over forks. Soon he was repurposing his mother’s silk Louboutin shoe bags to make chic new looks for his Barbie dolls. Before he was a tween he had a dress form to work on.

“I have a faith in glamour,” he says. “I just want to make the world a shinier place—one sequin at a time.”

He struggled academically, however. After he was asked to repeat his freshman year of high school, he dropped out. “I decided to take a whack at what I’d been doing since I was three,” he says. After teaching himself everything he could about fashion, he used family money, presumably, to launch August Getty Atelier in 2012, at 18.

Two years later he debuted at New York Fashion Week, becoming one of the youngest designers ever to show there, with a collection of sculpted minidresses and draped chiffon gowns. In 2015 he mounted an extravaganza in Los Angeles on the Universal Studios backlot, in collaboration with David LaChapelle. He checked Milan off his list in 2017, when he showed at the Four Seasons Hotel during the spring/summer collections.

He then made the leap to Paris couture in January 2019, when he presented Confetti, a frothy tribute to Old Hollywood glamour, in the conservatory-like Salon d’Eté at the Ritz. Models in white silk, satin, and lace lounged around a black grand piano. “Couture with a pool factor,” one fashion writer wrote. “If it can be worn around a pool anytime, day or night, I’m okay with it,” August says.

But with his fall/winter collection, Enigma, which showed in July, August turned to a dark theme. “I like to tell stories,” he says. “With Enigma I wrote about tragedy and morbid love.”

The gothic spectacle featured models slowly materializing through an allée of precisely pleached linden trees planted in Versailles boxes in the Grand Jardin of the Ritz. August, in a black sleeveless T-shirt, black jeans, and a studded belt and boots, summoned them forth as waiters served champagne, classical piano music played, and a breeze rustled the leaves. (A brutal heat wave that had flattened Paris for a week had, miraculously, just lifted.) “Extraordinary. I’ve seen something today I’ve never seen before,” said Becca Cason Thrash, a doyenne of Houston society who has seen pretty much everything.

But for validation August looks to just a couple of quarters. “There are two opinions I care about: my mom’s, and the French. Both are a little scary, because they’re both hard hitters.” He held his breath when he saw Ari hovering by the entrance to the Grand Jardin. “I get nervous for my mom. She means the world to me,” he says. (August presents White Hart, his next couture collection, in Paris on January 21.)

Nats’s path to fashion was different from her brother’s. At Mount Saint Mary’s University in Brentwood she double-­majored in poli-sci and business. She had perfect grades and planned to become a lawyer. “But there was another side of me, and I didn’t know how to express it,” she says. Her revelation came via an Yves Saint Laurent jacket. “It was white leather. I had wanted it forever, and I finally treated myself to it. I was so stoked.”

But her joy was cut short. “I went out with it on, and there were five other people wearing it. I thought, You’ve got to be kidding. I had spent so much on it and now it didn’t feel special.” She rectified that by taking paint pens and Sharpies to it. Her customized jacket was soon drawing raves from friends, who asked her to ­perform similar interventions on clothing items for them. After some Instagram posts and some word of mouth, her pieces became “a thing,” as she puts it.

She launched Strike Oil in 2014. At that point she started designing and making the garments themselves. “I knew nothing about anything, but I went downtown and bought leather and buttons and started figuring it out. I probably overpaid for everything and got ripped off 100 times, because I didn’t have a clue. (Initially she kept the business a secret from her mother, financing it all with her allowance.) But soon enough 50 jackets she made had been snapped up via the internet. (Her business is still strictly online, although plans for brick-and-mortar outlets are afoot.)

Many of the sketches and doodles she prints on her pieces are inspired by artists she was exposed to as a child—a number of whom her mother collected and, in some cases, socialized with, including Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, and Raymond Pettibon. When she makes a piece for a specific client, Nats incorporates motifs meaningful to that person. For example, a jacket for Halsey (“my absolute favorite singer”) got a drawing of a castle, a reference to the title of one of her songs, some of the lyrics from which Nats drew by hand on the lining.

The name of the line is an homage to her great-grandfather. When asked what the key to success was, he replied, “Rise early, work hard, and strike oil.”

“It’s one of my favorite rules to live by,” Nats says. “I have it tattooed on my right ankle.”

A few years before Nats found her fashion calling, Gregory Lazzarato was a nationally ranked diver growing up on the outskirts of Toronto, with a life that didn’t seem to foretell a future as one of Time’s “25 Most Influential People on the Internet,” as one of Forbes’s “30 Under 30,” or as “You­Tuber of the Year” at the Shorty Awards—all accolades garnered in 2018, just five years after she announced her transition and became Gigi Gorgeous on social media. In elementary school Gregory identified as queer—secretly at first. But eventually she discovered makeup and started posting online tutorials in 2008 on YouTube, and she quickly gained viewers.

“At first I kept it a secret from my family. I was a bit embarrassed,” Gigi says. “Eventually a family member saw it and told my mother, who confronted me. I thought she would be mad. Instead she said, ‘I’m your biggest fan. But we should probably keep this a secret from your father, for now.’” Dad found out soon enough. His reaction: “Just be safe.” His protectiveness turned to pride as checks began arriving from advertisers on Gigi’s YouTube channel.

When she was 18 Gigi met a transgender girl for the first time. “It clicked for me,” she says. “From that day on, in my mind I started living as a trans woman. It just took everyone else a little longer to figure it out.” It also involved years of hormone treatments and surgeries, in places ranging from Los Angeles to Bangkok (which she wrote about in her recent memoir, He Said, She Said). She made the announcement that she was a transgender woman in 2013; she legally changed her name the following year to Gigi Lazzarato and is now Gigi Loren Lazzarato Getty.

It was August who brought Gigi and Nats together. He cast them both as models in his 2015 Universal Studios show. With hundreds of people buzzing around the production, however, the women didn’t get a chance to speak. That opportunity came a few months later, when they flew to Paris to walk in a ready-to-wear show for August.

At Charles de Gaulle, Nats fell for Gigi: “I pretty much knew the second I saw her. She radiated an infectious amount of positive energy and happiness. She was like this amazing bright light. I said, ‘I’m obsessed with you. Can we go out on a date?’”

In March 2018 came the proposal, one fitting—and only ­possible—for the likes of a Getty. Nats and Gigi boarded a helicopter in Paris and, after floating above the forests of the Ile-de-France, landed at Château Vaux le Vicomte, which Nats had rented for the occasion. Designed in 1657 by Louis Le Vau, architect of Versailles, it is considered the most perfect château in France. As they landed, will you marry me appeared in lights on the building’s façade. The fireworks came a few minutes later.

Little more than a year later, in Montecito, the latest iteration of one of the world’s most modern families was officially incorporated. It was a wedding that broke the mold, yet it was simultaneously truly and thoroughly Getty. “Pretty much since we came out of the womb, we’ve been who we are,” Nats says of her brother and herself. “And no one was going to tell us otherwise.”

Photographs by Victoria Stevens

This story appears in the February 2020 issue of Town & Country.
SUBSCRIBE NOW