Hayley Paige can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to become a wedding dress designer.
“I was very lucky to just know what I wanted to do from a very early age,” she says.
For Paige, whose full name is Hayley Paige Gutman, that dream seemingly came true when she launched her eponymous bridal line in her mid-twenties.
Her sparkly, whimsical gowns made her a household name in the wedding industry, and she even landed a recurring spot on reality series “Say Yes to the Dress.”
It was a “really great chapter” of “thousands of dresses, amazing brides and growing the brand,” Paige, 39, tells CNBC Make It — until she lost ownership of her professional name and her intellectual property during a four-year legal battle with her former employer.
Now, Paige is back on the scene with a new bridal collection, and a new perspective on blending business and artistry.
Building her bridal brand
Paige studied fiber science and apparel design at Cornell University and “quickly got into the bridal industry” after graduating in 2007.
In 2011, when Paige was 25 years old, she was offered the “tremendous opportunity” to become a head designer at bridal house JLM Couture, she says.
All Paige had to do, she says, was sign an employment contract that gave JLM Couture the right to trademark her name and brand, as well as the rights to her designs and intellectual property. The contract also included a five year non-compete agreement should Paige leave the company.
“Essentially, I was told if I wanted the job, I would have to sign that contract,” Paige says — so she did.
After that, she “put [her] blinders on” and got straight to work.
“For me, I’m always very focused on the artistry and the fact that I was getting to do what I loved most,” she says, “so a lot of the other things that a lot of people would pay attention to, I just didn’t.”
Paige with one of her wedding dress designs.
Elizabeth Mae Photography
As her initial contract neared its end, Paige says she approached her employer in 2019 to negotiate a new agreement.
“I wanted to approach this from the perspective of, a lot has happened over the past almost 10 years. I’ve grown a multimillion-dollar brand. I’ve been on a show. There’s been a lot of opportunities where I feel like my value was not being properly calculated,” she recalls.
After a yearlong period of negotiation, Paige says she was “blindsided” in December 2020 when JLM Couture sued her over usage of the “Hayley Paige” name and the @misshayleypaige Instagram account.
Paige subsequently resigned from the company and fought for ownership of her social media accounts, arguing that she had created them as personal, not business, profiles.
In 2021, a federal judge granted JLM Couture a preliminary injunction that gave JLM Couture control over all social media accounts under Paige’s name and prevented Paige from using her name for business purposes, per the terms of the original employment contract. She was also barred from designing bridal apparel.
“In a matter of just a few days, I had gone from having a job, being able to use my name — very basic things I had become accustomed to — to basically not being allowed to use my name in any business or commerce or even to publicly identify,” Paige says.
From renaming to relaunching
While navigating the lawsuit, Paige’s goal was “to not let circumstances be in the driver’s seat” of her career, she says.
In 2022, Paige launched a shoe brand, She Is Cheval, and chose to go by Cheval professionally.
“I realized I needed to find a way to survive this period, and get back to designing in some facet,” she says.
Paige says she “made peace” with her situation, though she continued to appeal the injunction, but everything changed in 2023 when JLM Couture filed for bankruptcy.
In a settlement agreement, Paige was able to buy back the rights to her name, intellectual property and social media accounts for $263,000 in 2024. Neither Paige nor JLM Couture admitted fault under the terms of the settlement.
“We wish her the best,” a spokesman for JLM Couture said of Paige in a statement to the New York Times earlier this year.
For Paige, the experience was “surreal,” she says. “I’ll never forget the call from my lawyer, because I was like, wait, what? I get to be Hayley Paige again?”
Hayley Paige poses with models wearing her latest bridal collection.
Courtesy: Alyssa Ryan Photography
Rebuilding her brand wasn’t easy: Paige didn’t get her old patterns or dresses back, so she had to start her designs from scratch.
Still, reviving her bridal line “felt like a homecoming,” she says.
In July 2025, Paige released her comeback collection, “Twice Upon A Time.” This time around, she feels a “much stronger, grittier connection” to the brand, she says.
“It’s not so much ‘happily ever after’ and lighthearted,” Paige says. “It’s actually got a little more soul and strength to the storyline, and a tiny bit of defiance.”
The new collection received “the most positive, enthusiastic, supportive, encouraging, sparkly response you could hope for” from the bridal community, according to Paige.
“My face hurts from smiling,” she says.
How she’s paying it forward
Paige was “really young and naive” when she signed her employment contract in 2011, she says.
Today, her mission is to help other artists understand “what can happen if you don’t read that contract all the way through,” she says.
On International Women’s Day in 2023, Paige launched A Girl You Might Know Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping young creatives protect their legal rights.
Hayley Paige presented her “Twice Upon a Time” collection at The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, FL.
Courtesy: La Via Visual
Most artists don’t have the “influence, or the following or the finances” to sustain a legal battle as long as she did, Paige says.
“I was very aware that during my tribulations, I had this support system that a lot of people don’t have — my parents, my family, my community — and I felt like I wanted to pay it back and almost pay it forward,” she says.
The biggest lesson she learned from her legal battle is that creatives need to take charge of learning about the business side of their craft, she says.
“Unfortunately, we live in a world now where you actually have to know these things, even if you’re an artist, because if you just live in the artistry world, you could potentially be taken advantage of.”
In Paige’s view, “a lot of people measure success with artistry using the wrong ruler.”
“It’s not so much about monetary success and about expanding your brand and getting out there and all that stuff,” she says — it’s about maintaining your connection to your craft even “when everything goes wrong.”
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