The Moment
In a new first-person essay, Aydan Nix – the once-“secret” half-sister of Gigi and Bella Hadid – opens up about what it’s really like being folded into one of fashion’s most famous families in her early 20s.
Nix, 23, writes that her half-siblings, including supermodels Gigi, 30, and Bella, 29, and brother Anwar, 26, have been “nothing but warm and generous” since they connected in late 2023. She says they “made space” for her in ways they “didn’t have to,” from family calls to real career favors.
She also shares sweet specifics: Anwar immediately called her his “baby sister,” Bella refers to her as her “twin,” and Gigi helped get her a styling assistant job that threw her straight onto a 17-hour Victoria’s Secret campaign set – her first day on the job.
At the same time, Nix admits she still sometimes feels like “the odd one out” because she missed the childhood memories her siblings share: “No sleepovers, no shared holidays, no borrowing clothes, no inside jokes.”
It’s the rare celebrity-family story that’s not a total disaster: more Hallmark movie than courtroom drama, but with just enough ache to feel real.
The Take
I’ll be honest: when I see the words “secret half-sister of a famous family,” my brain immediately goes to soap opera plotline. Surprise child. Furious ex. Messy press tour. Rinse and repeat.
That’s why Nix’s version of events feels almost… radical in its normalcy. No screaming match, no public dragging – just a group of very famous twenty- and thirtysomethings doing something refreshingly unglamorous: showing up and being decent.
It helps that Nix doesn’t sound like she’s selling a fairy tale. Yes, the Hadids opened doors – Gigi setting her up with stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Alana sending resources on Palestinian history, Gigi taking her out for her first Palestinian meal, the siblings sharing culture as well as clothes. But Nix is clear that proximity to privilege doesn’t erase the emotional math of a late-in-life sibling reveal.
The picture she paints is layered: professionally, it’s a dream – straight from Parsons School of Design into major fashion sets. Emotionally, she’s trying to bridge a gap that started long before she was old enough to have any say in it.
Think of it like being invited to the family highlight reel halfway through the movie. You get access to the premiere, but you missed all the awkward first acts that bonded everyone else together. Nix is basically saying, “I love being here. I also know I arrived at intermission.”
What I also notice: there’s very little blame in her story. She doesn’t slam her father, Mohamed Hadid, or her mother, Terri Hatfield Dull. She doesn’t play the victim. Instead, she foregrounds the siblings’ effort: the calls, the shared activism around Palestine, the willingness to treat her as more than a PR problem.
In a celebrity landscape where “found out I had a secret sibling” can easily become content or chaos, the Hadid kids appear to have taken the grown-up route: acknowledge, include, mentor. If anything, they come off like the rare famous family that understands you can’t change the past, but you can absolutely decide what kind of siblings you want to be now.
Receipts
Confirmed
- Aydan Nix wrote a first-person essay in 2025 describing her experience meeting and bonding with her half-siblings, including Gigi, Bella, Anwar, Marielle, and Alana.
- She says she first connected with Gigi and Bella in late 2023, and that they and the rest of the family have been “warm and generous” and “made space” for her.
- Nix states she is 23 and recently graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York, pursuing work in fashion and styling.
- She recounts that Anwar called her his “baby sister” on their first phone call, and that Bella calls her “her twin.”
- Nix says Gigi introduced her to stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, and that her first day assisting on set was a Victoria’s Secret campaign where she worked 17 hours and felt “fulfilled.”
- She writes that her siblings have helped her connect with her Palestinian heritage: Alana sent her educational resources, she watched Anwar’s film “Walled Off,” and Gigi took her for her first Palestinian meal and taught her dish names.
- Nix confirms she is the daughter of real estate developer Mohamed Hadid and Terri Hatfield Dull, from a brief relationship more than 20 years ago.
- She openly describes still feeling “like the odd one out” at times because she did not share a childhood with the Hadid siblings and missed “sleepovers,” “shared holidays,” and “inside jokes.”
Gigi and Bella Hadid’s secret half-sister, Aydan Nix, gives rare insight into their ‘warm and generous’ sibling bond https://t.co/o9Uv7laVqz pic.twitter.com/gjvlcNND1H
— Page Six (@PageSix) December 31, 2025
Unverified / Reported
- Entertainment coverage has described Nix as the Hadids’ “secret” half-sister and reported that her mother’s brief relationship with Mohamed Hadid ended shortly before she discovered she was pregnant; these details are characterized as reported, not personally laid out by Nix in legal documents.
- Descriptions such as Gigi and Bella embracing Aydan “with open arms” are narrative characterizations from coverage of her essay rather than independently documented events.
Primary Sources (Human-Readable)
- First-person essay by Aydan Nix about meeting and bonding with the Hadid family, published in a fashion and culture magazine, 2025.
- Entertainment news article summarizing Nix’s essay and family background, dated December 31, 2025.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you’re not keeping a running chart of the Hadid family tree on your fridge, here’s the quick version. Gigi and Bella Hadid are two of the biggest models of their generation, staples of runways, campaigns, and red carpets. Their father, Mohamed Hadid, is a high-profile real estate developer. With his first wife, Mary Butler, he has daughters Marielle and Alana; with ex-wife Yolanda Hadid, he has Gigi, Bella, and their brother Anwar.
Over 20 years ago, after his divorce from Yolanda, Mohamed had a brief relationship with Terri Hatfield Dull. From that relationship came Aydan Nix, who largely grew up outside the spotlight. Her identity as Gigi and Bella’s half-sister became widely reported in 2025, and only in late 2023 did she personally connect with her famous siblings. Her new essay is the first time we’ve really heard her side, in her own words, about how that late-in-the-game sisterhood actually works.
What’s Next
For Nix, the next chapter seems to be less about finding her family and more about figuring out who she wants to be within it.
On the career front, she’s already gotten a crash course in high-level styling work and clearly has the contacts to keep going – especially if she continues assisting major fashion names and building her own portfolio. It wouldn’t be shocking to see her move more boldly into fashion design, creative direction, or become the go-to “behind-the-scenes” Hadid sibling in campaigns and shoots.
On the personal side, the real story to watch isn’t drama, it’s depth. Do we start seeing subtle, long-term signs that this isn’t just a “welcome to the group chat” phase – more shared projects with her sisters, public support of her own work, maybe the occasional red-carpet appearance where she’s not “the secret” anything, just another Hadid sibling in the mix?
And then there’s the cultural layer. Nix writes about becoming more active around Palestinian issues after engaging with her siblings’ work and resources. Expect her to keep leaning into that – perhaps through her styling, design choices, or social presence – in a way that threads her personal history, politics, and new family ties together.
However big her public profile gets, the most telling detail may remain the quiet one: does she still feel like “the odd one out” five years from now, or does this late-arrival sisterhood start to feel less like a guest spot and more like a permanent role?
What do you make of Aydan Nix’s story – does it read as genuinely healing, or do you think it’s almost impossible to fully catch up on a lifetime of family history once you join the picture as an adult?
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