Wedding dress designer Hayley Paige Gutman made an appearance Tuesday afternoon on Capitol Hill at a subcommittee hearing about the potential banning of noncompete agreements on workers.
Invited as a witness by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Gutman’s appearance before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs’ subcommittee on economic policy touched upon professional struggles and even the U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the Olympics. Dressed in a hot pink suit and with her blond tresses curled, Gutman’s style was reminiscent of Reese Witherspoon’s “Elle Woods” outfit in a fictitious congressional scene in the 2003 film “Legally Blonde 2.”
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Beaming with a smile throughout her brief remarks, Gutman, who is cofounder of the She Is Cheval label, informed attendees of knowing from a very young age what she wanted to do with her life. She said, “I dedicated my childhood, education and industry experience to bringing women joy through wedding dress design. And boy did I love it.”
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Before discussing how her “journey took a harrowing turn” and what was a three-and-a-half-year legal battle with her former employer, Gutman informed attendees of her “international acclaim” after being featured on the reality show “Say Yes to the Dress,” as well as what was once a brand with distribution in 300 stores.
On Tuesday, the designer explained that she had signed an employment contract that included a noncompete clause in 2011 at the age of 25. The contract was with JLM Couture, which she did not identify by name. (She continued to design her namesake wedding gowns until 2020. That same year JLM took legal action against her for allegedly locking out the company from the “Hayley Paige” social media accounts and violating a noncompete deal, among other alleged infractions.)
Opening the event, the senator had suggested that noncompetes impact 1 in 5 American workers in a variety of fields including “doggie day care” and hair salon stylists among others. She also spoke in favor of the Federal Trade Commission’s final rule to promote competition by banning noncompetes. Warren also reiterated the FTC’s estimates that such action will lead to more than 8,500 new businesses being created annually. She also praised the Joe Biden–Kamala Harris ticket for their efforts.
Gutman is the latest Millennial notable 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 in a residential youth treatment center and calling for child welfare reforms. Gutman’s social media tally and her appeal with a younger fan base were said to have been part of the incentive for including her in Tuesday’s hearing. The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz and an 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 deal, 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 paved the way for her to return to the bridal industry, designing wedding gowns. With a million-plus followers on Instagram and Pinterest, the designer had used those mediums — albeit under different names — to periodically air her legal woes, just as she had used them to attract shoppers.
Asked about Gutman’s Capitol Hill appearance, JLM’s chief executive officer Joseph Murphy said Wednesday that he was satisfied with the settlement between Gutman and JLM, he “wished her well.” Murphy declined any further comment.
Over the weekend, the designer used her Instagram to clue in fans to her plans to visit the Beltway, by posting Warren’s invitation to speak at the hearing. Before the subcommittee, the designer spoke of the “disproportionate negotiation power that many young employees and young creatives” are subjected to. Without naming JLM Couture, Gutman summarized all of the legal wrangling, and how she was unpaid in her chosen trade for a seven-year period and had to hand over her heavily followed social media accounts. Gutman claimed that she “refused to succumb to victimhood,” changed her name publicly and started an Instagram but she was not willing to change her trade after dedicating her life to the necessary skill set.
She and JLM Couture had been warring since 2020 in the courts. In January, the Second Circuit Court rejected a six-factor social media account ownership test and vacated a preliminary injunction that had awarded JLM control of her social media accounts. At that time, the court sided with her attorneys’ argument that ownership should be determined “like any other form of property,” by determining who owned the account at the moment of its creation and then evaluating whether that owner sold or transferred the account. In 2021, the designer had been sidelined from competing with JLM until the end of her contract, or using “Hayley Paige” in advertising. Earlier this year, a federal court determined that Gutman would have to wait out that noncompete through the end of 2025. But both parties’ settlement in late May lifted that and Gutman’s return to the bridal industry was greenlighted.
On Tuesday, Gutman spoke of “the residual stress” that her brides faced, due to her situation. Now a small business owner, Gutman said, “What I’ve learned is there are very effective legal precautions you can take to protect your intellectual property. There are privacy policies, fiduciary duties and also ways to effectively impose nondisclosure agreements to effectively safeguard trade secrets.”
In one of the more unexpected parts of her remarks, the designer drew 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 team finals at the Olympics. I was a competitive gymnast for 16 years so you can only imagine the poetry that I am experiencing right now. I can tell you that the pride and the patriotism that you can feel when you have no cap on what you’re capable of doing — that is where the magic is,” Gutman said. “…so to that, long live fair competition and let a girl design a dress.”