Wedding dress designer Hayley Paige Gutman appeared on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon at a subcommittee hearing on the potential ban on employee nondisclosure agreements.
Invited as a witness by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Gutman’s appearance before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs’ Economic Policy Subcommittee touched off professional wrestling and even the U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the Olympics. Dressed in a hot pink suit and with her blonde locks curled, Gutman’s style was reminiscent of Reese Witherspoon’s “Elle Woods” outfit in a fictional convention scene in the 2003 film “Legally Blonde 2.”
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Smiling during her short speech, Gutman, co-founder of the label She Is Cheval, told the audience that she knew from a young age what she wanted to do with her life. She said, “I dedicated my youth, education, and experience in the industry to bringing joy to women through designing wedding dresses. And boy, did I love it.”
Before discussing how her “journey took a terrifying turn” and what was a three-and-a-half year legal battle with her former employer, Gutman updated attendees on her “international fame” after appearing on the reality show “Say Yes to the Dress,” and what was once a brand with distribution in 300 stores.
On Tuesday, the designer explained that she signed an employment contract with a non-compete clause in 2011, at age 25. The contract was with JLM Couture, which she did not name. (She continued to design her eponymous wedding dresses until 2020. That same year, JLM took legal action against her for allegedly locking the company out of “Hayley Paige”’s social media accounts and violating a non-compete clause, among other alleged violations.)
Opening the event, the senator suggested that NDAs affect 1 in 5 American workers in a variety of industries, including doggy daycare and hairdressing. She also spoke in favor of the Federal Trade Commission’s final rule to promote competition by banning non-compete agreements. Warren also echoed the FTC’s estimates that such measures will lead to more than 8,500 new businesses being created each year. She also praised the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket for their efforts.
Gutman is the latest millennial with a robust social media following to take a public stand on Capitol Hill recently. In late June, Paris Hilton testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, detailing her teenage abuse at a residential juvenile treatment center and calling for child welfare reforms. Gutman’s social media tally and her appeal to a younger fan base are believed to have been part of the motivation for her inclusion in Tuesday’s hearing. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and orthopedic surgeon R. James Toussaint were the other two witnesses.
In late May, Gutman and JLM settled their years-long legal battle. As part of the settlement, Gutman agreed to pay JLM $263,000, and the New York-based multibrand bridal company gave the designer the rights to the “Hayley Paige” name and social media accounts. That also cleared the way for her to return to the bridal industry, where she began designing wedding dresses. With more than a million followers on Instagram and Pinterest, the designer had used those outlets — albeit under different names — to periodically air her legal woes, just as she had used them to attract shoppers.
JLM CEO Joseph Murphy did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday about Gutman’s presence on Capitol Hill.
Over the weekend, the designer took to Instagram to alert fans to her Beltway visit, posting Warren’s invitation to speak at the hearing. Speaking to the subcommittee, the designer spoke about the “disproportionate bargaining power that many young workers and young creatives” are exposed to. Without naming JLM Couture, Gutman recapitulated the legal battles and how she went unpaid for seven years in her chosen field and had to give up her widely followed social media accounts. Gutman claimed she “refuses to succumb to victimhood,” publicly changing her name and starting an Instagram, but she wasn’t willing to change her profession after dedicating her life to the skills required.
She and JLM Couture have been battling in court since 2020. In January, the Second Circuit court rejected a six-factor test for social media accounts and overturned a preliminary injunction that would have given JLM control of her social media accounts. At the time, the court sided with her attorneys that ownership should be determined “like any other form of ownership,” by determining who owned the account at the time it was created and then evaluating whether that owner had sold or transferred the account. In 2021, the designer was barred from competing with JLM, or from using “Hayley Paige” in advertising, until the end of her contract. Earlier this year, a federal court ruled that Gutman would have to wait until the end of 2025 for that non-compete clause to take effect. But the parties’ settlement in late May reversed that, and Gutman’s return to the bridal industry was given the green light.
On Tuesday, Gutman spoke about the “residual stress” her brides experienced because of her situation. Now a small business owner, Gutman said, “What I’ve learned is that there are very effective legal safeguards that you can take to protect your intellectual property. There are privacy policies, fiduciary duties, and also ways to effectively enforce nondisclosure agreements to effectively protect trade secrets.”
In one of the most unexpected parts of her remarks, the designer turned her attention to the Summer Games in Paris. “The irony is that this hearing is taking place on one of the best days of competition in the world: the women’s gymnastics final at the Olympics. I was a competitive gymnast for 16 years, so you can imagine the poetry that I’m experiencing right now. I can tell you that the pride and the patriotism that you can feel when you have no limit on what you can do, that’s where the magic is,” Gutman said. “…so long live fair competition and let a girl design a dress.”
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