Growing Up Getty, page 17
Around 2010, Ariadne and the kids moved back to Los Angeles. Nats flew to California a few months ahead of his mother and brother. Academically he was doing fine, but he needed to escape the boarding-school social scene, where he’d fallen into trouble. He was drinking and struggling with body-image issues, which would challenge him for years to come.
During those months in LA, his aunt Aileen looked after him. After her own battles with drugs and HIV, Aileen was now in a good place and running Gettlove, her nonprofit to aid the homeless. When Nats arrived, he and Aileen lived in a building attached to a men’s sober-living center. “We would wake up at five every morning, make three hundred lunch bags, do the breakfast line, then we would drive around LA handing out bags with blankets and toothbrushes to homeless people,” Nats recalled.
“It was hard-core, but one of the most meaningful and important things I’ve ever done, and it really set the tone for my life back in LA. It turned me into a mini version of my mom and my aunt.”
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Around the same time, 2,500 miles away in Mississauga, Ontario, Gregory Lazzarato was a high school athlete (a nationally ranked diver) with a secret. Lazzarato—who was born the same year as Nats and who later became Gigi Gorgeous—had discovered makeup.
Lazzarato began making videos in which she offered makeup tutorials, posting them on YouTube. They quickly gained viewers; in the process, she earned self-esteem. “I never felt beautiful earlier in my life. Makeup was a confidence tool for me, and it helped me identify with my femininity,” she said.
But she was still embarrassed enough to hide her posts from her family. Eventually a relative saw them, and informed Gigi’s mother, Judy. “She confronted me,” recalled Gigi. “I thought she would be mad. Instead, she said, ‘I’m your biggest fan. But we should probably keep this from your father for now.’ ” Soon enough, David, her dad, found out. His reaction: “Just be safe.” Before long, Gigi began to receive checks from advertisers on her YouTube channel, and later from brands she partnered with. Her two brothers, one older, one younger, were supportive too.
In Los Angeles, Nats enrolled at Mount Saint Mary’s University, where he double-majored in political science and business; August entered New Roads School. After he was asked to repeat freshman year, he dropped out. He began homeschooling, while teaching himself how to be a fashion designer. “I decided to take a whack at what I’d been doing since I was three,” he said. “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.”
As the trio settled into a 6,000-square-foot penthouse atop the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, the kids were finding their identities. August’s coming-out story, at age fifteen, involved a room service waiter at the Sunset Tower Hotel, as he later told the New York Times. Nats began to date girls. When they both told their mother about their orientations, it was no surprise, as Nats recollected: “When I told her I was gay, she looked at me and said, ‘Nats, I gave birth to you. I knew the minute you came out of me.’ I was like, ‘Thanks, but, dude, Mom, you could have given me a heads-up!’ ” Said Ariadne, “I kept waiting for them to tell me, because I didn’t want to tell them.”
As her children explored gay life in Los Angeles, Ariadne welcomed their friends and lovers. She became a den mother to much of the city’s queer community, members of which took to warmly calling her Mama G. One typical night, August stepped out of his bedroom around midnight and found six drag queens in the kitchen with Ariadne, who was making them bowls of pasta. “They were like, ‘We’re here to see your mom. Go back to bed,’ ” he recalled.
Even while rolling out hospitality, Ariadne was fretting about the darkening political climate and the threats it presented to Nats and August and people like them. Their coming out encouraged her to come out, as an activist. “That’s when she got super involved in the LGBT Center and GLAAD. I think that’s when she found her inner fire,” said Nats. “It lit a fire under her ass. I’m so proud of her.”
In 2012, August—eighteen, lean, tanned, and liberally tattooed—officially launched his career. He opened August Getty Atelier, in a spacious building his mother acquired in Culver City. 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 chiffon gowns.
While at Mount Saint Mary’s, Nats—gamine, with porcelain-pale skin, sometimes-platinum short hair, and his share of tattoos—began modeling, represented by Next Management. In November 2015, when August staged his next big show—an extravaganza on the Universal Studios lot, in collaboration with photographer David LaChapelle—Nats was cast to walk in it. So was Gigi Gorgeous; two years earlier, when Gregory announced her transgender status on social media, she’d adopted the name (legally, she changed it to Gigi Loren Lazzarato). About the same time she moved to LA, where, through mutual acquaintances, she met August. Self-described as “boy crazy,” Gigi was dating men and identified as gay.
Already a tall, striking blonde with full breasts, she was still in her transition process, which had started quietly a few years before. Her path began when she met a transgender girl for the first time. “It clicked for me,” Gigi said. “From that day on, in my mind I started living as a trans woman. It just took everyone else a little longer to find out.” It also involved years of hormone treatments and surgeries, in locations ranging from Los Angeles to Bangkok. Every step of the way she documented her transition on social media. In the process, she gained some eight million followers across YouTube and other platforms, and a reputation as a trans role model.
Even though Gigi and Nats were both part of August’s Universal Studios show, they didn’t meet there. There were sixty models, and it was a huge, immersive production. (The Old West lot was transformed into “Heaven” and “Hell.” Among the props in the latter were televisions rolling Fox News footage of presidential candidate Trump.)
They met a few months later, when they flew to Paris to walk in a show for August there.
At Charles de Gaulle Airport, Nats fell for Gigi. “I pretty much knew the second I saw her. She radiated an infectious amount of positive energy and happiness. She is this amazing bright light. I pretty much laid it on the table to her. I said, ‘We’re not going to be just friends. I’m obsessed with you. Can we go out on a date?’ ”
“Then, sooner rather than later, we both said, ‘I love you,’ ” said Gigi. She came out as lesbian.
Gigi got an immediate stamp of approval from Ariadne. “I liked her straightaway. She’s so full of life, you can’t resist her,” she said.
As the couple was finding happiness together, August Getty Atelier, with about twenty employees, was taking off. Rachel McAdams wore a slinky emerald-green satin halter-neck gown August designed for her to the 2016 Academy Awards, where her film Spotlight won Best Picture. His ever more extravagant custom creations were also being worn by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, and others.
“I just want to make the world a shinier place—one sequin at a time,” said August, summing up his philosophy.
More accomplishments came in 2017. A feature-length documentary, This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, directed by two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. For the occasion, Gigi wore an especially dazzling August Getty Atelier creation, which came to be known as the “Million Dollar Dress.” Constructed from metal mesh, it was embroidered with 500,000 Swarovski crystals. Six artisans spent three months making it. A couple months later, Paris Hilton wore it to the Hollywood Beauty Awards. (Its name notwithstanding, it was estimated to be worth some $270,000.)
That September, August showed his Spring 2018 collection at the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan. “His vision translated well: models wore glamorous looks with red carpet appeal such as a silver and gold beaded white strapless gown,” wrote WWD.
Next, it was Nats’s turn to take the wraps off his fashion line. He began it in secret, as he completed his studies at Mount Saint Mary’s. His grades were perfect, and he planned to become a lawyer. “But there was another side of me, and I didn’t know how to express it,” he said. His aha moment came via an Yves Saint Laurent jacket. “It was white leather. I had wanted it forever, and finally treated myself to it. I was so stoked.”
But the joy was short-lived. “I went out with it on, and there were, like, 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.” He remedied that by taking paint pens and Sharpies to it. His customized jacket was soon drawing praise from friends, who asked him to perform similar interventions on garments for them. Following some Instagram posts and word of mouth, his pieces—hoodies, trucker hats, and other staples of streetwear to which he gave an arty, luxe spin—became “a thing,” as he recalled.
In the beginning, he financed it from his allowance and kept it a secret from his mother. “I was super insecure about it. It took a lot for me to say, ‘Look at this’… because it’s a representation of me.” He needn’t have worried. Actress Bella Thorne and singer Halsey were among the first customers who began snapping up the merch online.
The business, Strike Oil, launched officially in 2018 out of the Culver City building where August operates. Its large, stark-white rooms feature contemporary art, as well as a sizable vintage Getty Oil sign, a gift from cousin Joseph in London. Ariadne serves as CEO of both companies. The name Nats chose for his is a tribute to his great-grandfather and his famous statement that the key to success was “Rise early, work hard, and strike oil.”
“It’s one of my favorite rules to live by. I have it tattooed on my right ankle,” he said. “So, when it came time to name my empire, if you will, I chose it as an homage to the family I have now and the ones that came before. It’s my DNA.
“I always looked at leather as the black gold of fashion,” he added, borrowing the term for oil. “When I start painting on a leather jacket, it feels like I am painting on oil, like I am striking oil.”
(Great-grandfatherly inspiration and pride also run deep for his brother. “Whenever I am feeling sad or uninspired, I go to his grave. I sit and ponder, surrounded by nature, and think, WWJPGD—what would J. Paul Getty do?” said August. Recently, when he Instagrammed an image of the Getty Center’s hilltop campus, he captioned it simply, “Feeling prideful AF.”)
Many of the sketches Nats prints on his pieces are inspired by artists he was exposed to as a child—a number of whom Ariadne collects, including Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, and Raymond Pettibon. The extended family, abounding with collectors, also provides inspiration. “Everybody kind of has their own vibe and taste,” he explained. “Being surrounded by that even without knowing I was being exposed to it really shaped my love and appreciation of art.”
At the same time, he had some harrowing experiences. In his social media posts, he has talked forthrightly about his battles. During the Covid lockdown in 2020, he reflected: “I never realized how ill I truly was. Between drugs, eating disorders, and mental health issues I honestly was knocking on deaths door.… After multiple over doses, a near coma, broken bones, and a body weight of under 80lbs I still returned to a life of drugs, darkness and self hate.… It has taken me years to recover and it is still a daily struggle.”
Gigi helped him find the light. She was the first person he had dated “who saw me for me,” he said. In March 2018, Nats proposed. The pair flew to Paris, where they boarded a helicopter. They hovered above the forests of the Île-de-France and landed at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, which Nats had rented for the occasion. Designed in the seventeenth century by Louis Le Vau, architect of Versailles, it is widely considered the most ideal château in France. (J. Paul Getty admired it too: he contemplated buying it, as he wrote in his diary.)
WILL YOU MARRY ME? appeared in large lights on the building’s façade as the couple descended. Ariadne, August, and other family and friends were awaiting them inside with champagne. Cue the fireworks.
The jubilant scene inside was captured in a video that Gigi posted on YouTube. “I’m going to have a daughter-in-law!” said Ariadne, who was accompanied by her partner of more than a decade, Louie Rubio, a music producer. (His credits include soundtracks for numerous movies and TV shows, including Baywatch and Brothers and Sisters.)
Soon after, Gigi met most of the Getty clan when she traveled with Nats to Wormsley, to attend uncle Mark’s wedding to Caterina Nahberg in the Walled Garden. On a podcast with Gigi, Nats later spoke of how well everybody got on, which he likened to “the icing on the cake” of their engagement: “When you met my entire extended family, it was like, ‘Damn, if you can keep up with this—getting into it with them, and being able to hang—I am so down.’ ”
In June 2018, Ariadne, along with Nats and August, gave a pretty remarkable interview to Brooks Barnes, LA correspondent of the New York Times, for the profile entitled “Growing Up Getty.”
Ariadne was nervous at the start. “I’m a super-shy introvert—this is not my comfort zone,” she said, over sips of chicken soup in her apartment at the Montage, where she was also flanked by Bandit, her brown chihuahua, and a pair of Jeff Koons balloon dogs.
Talking about why she gave $15 million to GLAAD, which had been announced in Davos a few months earlier, she decried the Trump administration’s assaults on gay rights—they were affronts to her family and others like theirs. At the same time, her family was dealing with a unique onslaught, from the new movie All the Money in the World and the TV series Trust, both of which plumbed the grisly details of her brother’s kidnapping. “Our family has been under attack,” she said. August and Nats, for their parts, called the films “demonizing” and “disgusting.”
The Ridley Scott–directed movie, starring Christopher Plummer and Michelle Williams, had been released six months earlier. Danny Boyle’s series, starring Donald Sutherland and Hilary Swank, was currently on FX—the ten episodes of Season One. Two more seasons had been envisioned by the producers. For Ariadne, a single season was more than enough. She not only vocalized her unhappiness (while the rest of her extended family largely opted not to comment), she hired Martin Singer, one of Hollywood’s toughest and most powerful attorneys. A letter he sent to FX and Boyle stated that the series “falsified the dreadful story of Ariadne’s brother’s kidnapping to turn it into a cruel and mean-spirited depiction of the Getty family, maliciously and recklessly portraying them as greedily cooperating in and/or facilitating a kidnapping that left a family member mutilated.” Seasons Two and Three did not go into production.
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That September, the Los Angeles LGBT Center presented her with its Distinguished Achievement Award—her first-ever award for philanthropy. (A $4.5 million gift from Getty enabled construction of the organization’s new Ariadne Getty Foundation Youth Academy and the forthcoming Ariadne Getty Foundation Senior Housing.) “I’m shaking like a leaf,” she said when she got to the stage in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton, even though her children had warmed up the 1,500 guests with a humorous introduction. In August’s part, he offered details of his coming-out story: “I never came out. I just said one day, ‘Mom, I’m going on a date with the room service guy.’ All she said was, ‘Which one?’ ” (Ari did go out later that night in search of one of the health-service vans that operate around West Hollywood; she loaded up on information packets and condoms, which she gave to her son.)
“I have recently stepped out of the shadows of my donating and my philanthropic work, which hasn’t been that easy,” said Ariadne in her remarks. “I’ve done it to encourage others to step forward and understand the impact of what it means to give… and to participate on a larger platform, to have things resonate. I encourage everybody to get connected, start being active, and don’t be shy like me for all the years that I have been.”
She also thanked one of August’s ex-boyfriends for introducing her to the LGBT Center. “My office is filled with all of August’s exes,” she said.
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In January 2019, August vaulted to fashion’s stratosphere when he showed a collection he entitled “Confetti” alongside the haute couture collections during Paris Fashion Week. Inside the Salon d’Été, a glass-conservatory-like space at the Ritz Hotel, models in white silk, satin, and lace lounged around a grand piano. “Bridging the Old Hollywood glamour of his hometown with Parisian Grace,” WWD wrote.
Showing his work during the Paris season at such a tender age wasn’t stressful for him. “It was a natural progression. I don’t get nervous. This is what I do,” he said.
As soon as the presentation was over, August flew to Davos to join his sibling, Gigi, and Ariadne. Returning to the World Economic Forum, AGF and GLAAD sponsored another panel with top corporate executives, “Making Equality Equal: The Next Move Forward for LGBT Rights.” The emphasis on corporate social responsibility reflects Ariadne’s view that while governments—in the US and around the world—are lagging behind on human rights and moral leadership, big businesses can be more responsive and effective agents to advance social equity issues (something that became more fully apparent to others a couple years later, in the wake of battles over election laws and Black Lives Matter). “So, basically, we’re here to strong-arm the corporate world, to make sure they do the right thing. Shame them, if necessary,” she said.
A particularly moving moment came when Dr. Corinna Lathan, CEO of AnthroTronix, a robotics and biotech firm, spoke. AGF/GLAAD is helping to foster “a culture of LGBTQ acceptance” at Davos, she said; its panels were having unexpected impact. The previous year at Davos, she recounted, her main purpose had been to moderate a panel on the Earth BioGenome Project. Yet “the most powerful conversation that I had was with pop culture icon Gigi Gorgeous.” Gigi, as it happens, is “the idol” of Lathan’s own eleven-year-old transgender daughter, Eliza. A letter that Gigi subsequently wrote to Eliza was enormously inspirational to her. “The professional became personal,” Lathan said.
