Lady Gaga's Sister Speaks Out: Does Weird Run in the Family?

Singer's younger sibling reveals what it's like to live in the shadow of a superstar

By Marianne Garvey Sep 21, 2011 4:05 PMTags
Lady Gaga, Natali GermanottaAndrew H. Walker/Getty Images

Growing up in a house with Lady Gaga means you know all her secrets—like how under all those weird layers, the meat-dress wearing singer is just a completely normal human being.

That's according to her sister, Natali Germanotta, anyway. 

Gaga's younger sibling is opening up to Teen Vogue about her "Telephone"-singing sibling and what it's like to actually be related to her. Let's just say a little weirdness does run in the family...

Germanotta, 19, studies fashion at Parsons in New York City, is much more subdued than her older sis. Obviously.

When it comes to her own style and dressing herself every morning, there's no placing herself in an egg or gluing prosthetics to her cheekbones. Instead, she says she wears mostly black, and an everyday uniform she calls "witchypoo."

As for her sister, whom she calls "Stefi," likes to wear, baby Gaga says she wouldn't go there herself.

"Some of the stuff she wears I'd be like, 'No, never,'" she says. 

Germanotta hasn't asked her sister to pull any strings for her in the fashion world. Gaga does that all on her own—like the time she turned a shoe her sister made for a school project into a piano she played for a performance on Oprah

"I was at my parents' house sobbing, like, 'Oh my God,'" Natali says of the surprise. 

Although Germanotta says she may work one day as her sister's personal stylist, she fears it may be exhausting—as we all know, "she changes 50 times a day."

Six years younger than the still very alive singer, Germanotta says she never feels like she's living in her sister's shadow, not even Gaga attended her high school graduation in an attention-grabbing beekeeper's hat with netting. Natali says that part was actually her idea.

"The teachers were like, 'Oh my God, I can't handle this family,'" she says. "She asked me, 'Should I dress really conservative and not look like myself, or should I do it over-the-top and freak everybody out?' And I was like, 'The latter, definitely the latter.'"

When it comes to her own fashion risks, she has an easy retort for critics, especially the sisters' dad.

"I say, 'Well, at least I'm not walking out on the street with red pasties,' and he'll be like, 'Good point.'"

Just how different are the sisters? Here's a hint: Germanotta brought a tiny lizard along to her interview.