Oil heir, activist and fashion designer Nats Getty on finding love and coming out as transgender

‘Growing up Getty’ is a term we’re all familiar with, but how does the experience differ when you’re from the dynasty itself, and transgender?

It’s a typically sunny morning in Los Angeles when Nats Getty dials in to speak with me via video call. Smoking a cigarette, wearing basketball shorts and a self-designed ‘Getty Oil’ hat from his label Strike Oil (a fun play on the family business), it’s clear that straight-laced dynastic stereotypes stop with Nats. ‘I think I have just always had the attitude of not giving a f*ck,’ says Getty, ‘I say that and I do mean it because I have always just tried to live my life for me.’

Born in 1992, Nats is Ariadne Getty’s first child with Justin Williams. His brother and fellow designer, August, was born two years later. ‘The first time I came out, I was having a panic attack about telling my mum and she said, “Nats, I gave birth to you. I knew the second you were born,”’ Getty says. Growing up between the US and a boarding school in Oxford, Getty’s youth was a fusion of transatlantic cultures. ‘Before I came out as trans, the only way I could describe it is that I was the ultimate tomboy. But when I look back now, I realised that when I was younger, living in LA, and Santa Monica, I was so free, and I wasn't being told what my gender was. I was running around like a little boy. Once I got older in society, people at boarding school started telling me how a girl is supposed to act and look and be, I got really insecure. I had to shift and change how I was acting to fit in. But it was evident from the beginning,’ says Getty.