In 2020, following a lockdown stay in Los Angeles, the group released “Santana Winds,” a hypnotic ballad inspired by Southern California’s fierce and sometimes evil winds.
“There was so much destruction going on,” Isabel recalled a year later, from Gstaad, Switzerland. By this time, things were considerably brighter. She had just returned from Mykonos, where she and her South African–reared cousin Vanessa Waibel staged a high-spirited bachelorette weekend for their San Francisco relation Ivy Getty. Photos of the girls—at one point in matching pink hot pants, dancing stageside at Jackie O’, the fashionable beach club—splashed across Instagram and the Daily Mail.
“They are like sisters—we grew up together,” Isabel said of Vanessa and Ivy. “I’m very close to a lot of my cousins.” (Despite living across four continents today, most of JPG’s approximately 40 great-grandchildren are surprisingly close-knit.)
Her extended family has had its troubles, she acknowledged. “[But] everyone has tragedies in their families. It’s just that ours have been more public. There has been a lot of suffering, but that’s why it’s important to stay grounded and together.”
Other young Gettys—some by way of marriage—have been cutting glamorous figures through Europe. Sabine (née Ghanem) was born in Geneva to a Lebanese father and Egyptian mother, but her introduction to the family happened one weekend in New York, where she was enrolled in the Gemological Institute of America. At a dinner party, she met Brown University undergraduate Joseph Getty, the British-raised son of Italian aristocrat Domitilla Harding and Getty Images cofounder Mark Getty (a son of JPG’s third born, Paul Jr.).
Joseph was smitten with Sabine. Long-limbed, brown-eyed, with a bob of flaxen hair, she has a commanding personality and a cosmopolitan air. Fashion-mad, she describes her style as Bob Mackie meets Catherine Deneuve.
After the couple settled in London, she launched her line of fine jewelry, Sabine G. Her fanciful pieces were soon adorning the likes of Celine Dion, Rihanna, Nicole Kidman—and Deneuve.
On a brilliant morning in May 2015, a pack of paparazzi swarmed outside Basilica dei Santi XII Apostoli in Rome as a parade of young royals, including Princess Beatrice and Monaco’s Pierre Casiraghi, filed in. Thirty-three years after Mark and Domitilla were wed inside the ancient basilica, Joseph and Sabine chose to exchange their vows here.
But where was the bride and her hooded cape? Since the latter stretched 23 feet and featured 500,000 sequins (hand-embroidered by Maison Lesage) shaped into an image of a radiating sun, it required its own minder and car, which threaded its way through Rome’s tortuous traffic. At last, the garment arrived and was fastened to the bride, who was already clad in a figure-hugging, long-sleeve duch*esse silk dress, the handiwork of Schiaparelli Haute Couture.
Tatler subsequently ranked Sabine and Joseph number three in its “Social Power Index,” just behind the Duke and duch*ess of Cambridge. While many Gettys today lead surprisingly unglamorous lives, Sabine lives up to the expectations. “She’s the most Getty of them all!” one social observer remarked.
In the nonglam category, there is Beau Perry, who labors in the remote reaches of Alaska. A mariculturist, Beau is the largest grower of seaweed on the Pacific Coast, and at the forefront of sustainable marine aquaculture. Beau’s mother, Claire Perry, is one of the three daughters born to JPG’s first son, George. “The Georgettes,” as the women have been called, are all dedicated environmentalists and intensely private; their offspring share their aversion to the press.
Raised in Southern California and educated at Georgetown University, Beau founded his seaweed-propagating company, Blue Evolution, in 2013; the next year he headed north to Kodiak Island. He was among the first entrepreneurs who saw the potential to cultivate seaweed in Alaskan waters.
“I have loved seaweed all my life,” he once explained on Instagram. “As a surfer I’ve spent an eternity bobbing up and down amidst California’s kelp forests…. Traveling the coast you can find…giant kelp, bull kelp, sea palm, the list goes on and on—and they feel as different to me as beech, redwood or oak forest.”
Blue Evolution provides Alaskan fishermen with seed stock, which it makes by extracting spores from wild kelp; the seedlings are grown on pieces of string known as seed pipes, which the fishermen thread along ropes that are suspended from a floating frame. After the “planting” is done in November, the ribbons of kelp grow up to a foot a day. Weaving and protecting the lines is arduous. In May, Beau and his cohorts haul up the fruit of their labor—tons of nutritious, slimy green bunches.
In the American branch of this dynasty, the epicenter is San Francisco—a palatial mansion in Pacific Heights, to be exact. Here, Ann and Gordon Getty (now 88, he is JPG’s only surviving son) raised their four sons.
At Christmastime 1998, Billy, the youngest, became engaged to Vanessa Jarman. Ann, one of the era’s most formidable grandes dames, took a considerable interest in the bride’s gown. She called her friend Oscar de la Renta in New York. “I want you to dress Vanessa,” she told him, according to Boaz Mazor, a longtime de la Renta executive. “I want her to be the most beautiful bride ever. I want her to look unbelievable.”
“Oscar dropped everything. He called in all his assistants, the office was turned upside down,” Mazor continued. “Then we got a call to cancel everything.”
Vanessa had decided to go with Narciso Rodriguez. For her, the new star designer agreed to make his first wedding dress since the one that had launched him to stardom—Carolyn Bessette’s, for her wedding to John Kennedy Jr. in 1996.
“Ann was livid! Furious!” says Mazor.
Yet when Vanessa made her entrance to the Renaissance-themed ceremony at a ranch in Napa Valley, riding sidesaddle on a speckled horse at sunset, pretty much everybody had to agree she chose right. Her formfitting matte satin gown with crystal-embroidered layers glistened.
