Hayley Paige, a popular wedding dress designer with a large online following, settled with JLM Couture in a Delaware bankruptcy court on Fri. May 24, 2024. Paige signed with JLM in 2011, and details of that agreement were behind the years-long legal dispute.
When Paige signed with JLM, she gave up rights to her name and derivatives, including Hayley, Paige, Hayley Gutman, and Hayley Paige Gutman, Paige’s full legal name. According to JLM, by doing so, Paige also gave up the rights to her social media accounts under those names. And as Paige’s popularity grew, her work accrued millions of followers.
Paige later explained in an Instagram video that she was 25 years old when she signed with JLM. She also said that a lawyer did not review the document, and in her view, she did not completely give up the use of her name on social media, according to Business Insider. (JLM denied that Paige didn’t have legal counsel present when she signed the contract.)
The @misshayleypaige Instagram account
In 2012, Hayley Paige launched a new Instagram page, @misshayleypaige, and tensions arose between the designer and JLM Couture. Two years later, she also started a Pinterest account with the same name. According to Paige, they were both personal accounts. According to JLM, however, the content was professional and therefore controlled by the company.
By 2019, Paige’s stature had grown significantly, due in no small part to her appearances on the reality TV shows Say Yes To The Dress, and Say Yes to America, on TLC. Around that time, Paige also used @misshayleypaige on TikTok, mixing personal posts with design-related content. In the meantime, JLM attempted to control what Paige shared, telling her it must be JLM-approved.
Hayley Paige’s new contract
About a year later, in 2020, Haley Paige’s JLM contract needed to be renegotiated. After launching the @misshayleypaige accounts, JLM said they warned her several times to only post company-approved content on her accounts. According to JLM, Paige changed the passwords. She also dropped JLM references on the pages and shared content from other companies, JLM said in their complaint.
Paige insisted, however, that the accounts were personal, and so, by December 2020, JLM sued Paige for control of the Instagram account, specifically. A judge granted JLM a restraining order and forced Paige to turn over passwords to all her accounts, among other concessions.
On another Instagram account, @allthatglittersonthegram, Paige explained that year that JLM had temporarily prevented her from using her name in public or for business matters, and that she had resigned from the company. Paige continued to work in design under the name “Cheval,” she announced in a post from August 2022.
The appeals court ruling and settlement
For five years, Hayley Paige was not allowed to use her name on social media or for professional purposes and she could not work for a JLM competing company until Paige’s contract expired in 2022. In 2023, JLM filed for bankruptcy, citing Paige’s ongoing legal expense as a cause.
In January 2024, an appeals court declared Paige’s case should be reconsidered, and in May, Paige and JLM settled: She would regain the @misshayleypaige accounts and other intellectual property. In return, Paige would pay JLM $263,000. And with that, Paige could restart her career under her name in the wedding dress design industry.
“I’m so grateful for the support and just getting through that time and everything. We just can be one big happy family now,” Paige said on social media when the settlement was announced.