Last week, JLM Couture sued the designer for breach of contract, amongst different issues, in a New York federal courtroom. The firm’s fundamental gripe is over the @misshayleypaige account, which JLM asserts it owns and has the fitting to function because it sees match. It additionally filed a short lived restraining order banning Gutman from utilizing her identify or her social media accounts, which a decide granted.
In the grievance, JLM accused Gutman of “hijacking” the Instagram account, which she claimed was her personal private account, after contract negotiations broke down between the 2 events in November.
An organization spokesperson didn’t return a request for touch upon the video or the lawsuit. However, in an announcement to the New York Post, the corporate stated that whereas negotiating a brand new contract, “the two sides disagreed over how much freedom Hayley would have to promote her non-related side businesses on the company site.”
JLM added, “After Hayley stopped posting JLM content and deprived the company access to the account, we brought the matter before the court. After carefully listening to both sides, a judge granted us the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO). We respect the judge’s decision that JLM should have temporary control over the company site and feel the process was fair and equitable.”
JLM asserted within the grievance that per the preliminary contract Gutman signed in 2011, it owns the fitting to her identify, any derivatives of her identify, and all designs. This extends, it stated, to any social media account bearing her identify. The firm additionally stated its advertising and marketing group helped the Instagram account develop into so massive and attributed a lot of Gutman’s line’s success to the corporate. The grievance states that the road grew in reputation largely because of the firm’s “marketing campaigns” and the standard of its clothes along with Gutman herself.
Gutman advised her followers on Instagram that she signed the preliminary contract with JLM Couture when she was 25, new to the trade, and naive. She additionally stated she didn’t have a lawyer look over the contract.
“If anyone tells you that you don’t need to have a lawyer look at an agreement or contract, please get a lawyer, if that is the only thing you take away from this video,” she stated.
While discussing renewing her contract this yr, Gutman stated she felt bullied and manipulated by the corporate and its CEO, Joseph L. Murphy, in her effort to get one which was much less “one-sided.” A supply near Gutman advised BuzzFeed News that she had lengthy felt that the corporate had been overbearing and controlling.
“I do not wish to subscribe to their business ethics or the way they treat employees and others,” Gutman stated in her video, including that she now not desires to align her model with JLM Couture.
In its assertion to the New York Post, JLM stated, “Joe continues to hold Hayley in high regard and hopes to resolve their differences.”
One of the primary points between the corporate and Gutman, in keeping with the grievance, is her use of her identify on social media. The firm states that Gutman started utilizing her identify on TikTok in 2019, posting movies that it claims “did not properly represent” her model. Since then, Gutman and JLM have been locked in a battle over the Instagram account, which she asserts is her private account.
In her video, Gutman claims she has used the account as a hybrid since she began it, mixing her private {and professional} lives as a marriage costume designer.
“[My Instagram] has been an expression of my whole life,” she stated.
Gutman accused JLM of taking a platform she constructed organically by way of relationships along with her followers and turning it into “purely a business opportunity.”
According to JLM Couture, the account “belongs to JLM, it was never Gutman’s account.” After months of preventing over the account and different points, JLM sued Gutman and was granted a restraining order to briefly ban her from utilizing her identify or accessing any of the Hayley Paige social media accounts. According to the supply, Gutman’s attorneys consider this order means she can’t use her identify on the @allthatglittersonthegram account or probably even converse it in public.
Soon after the video went up on Instagram, ladies on social media started to precise their help for Gutman.
