Update: How to Lose Your Name with Hayley Paige (Cheval)

It’s been a few years since we last spoke with Hayley Paige about the legal battle that took her ideas, her job and her identity. In this episode, we get an update from Hayley. And we get to use her actual name!

You can shop for Hayley Paige dresses at ⁠hayleypaige.com

This is an episode from the new season of TTFA Anthologies, go to ⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠ to listen to the full season(and past seasons)!

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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If you’ve been a listener for a while, you might remember this story. It’s about a woman that we had to call Cheval when we were making the episode, not because that was her actual name, but because she had lost her name.

She lost her name when she lost her brand name. She’d also lost all of the work that she’d created under that name and was barred from the industry where she had made a name for herself under her actual name.

It was a situation very similar to a situation that I myself narrowly escaped with the podcast and a story that a lot of people have experienced from Taylor Swift on down to creatives and artists that you’ve never heard of and never will.

It is a specific kind of stress, a specific kind of grief, and it is also one that resonates through many fields and many situations. When we first recorded this, it was 2022.

So I had just gotten ownership of all of my podcast work, and Taylor Swift was re-recording all of her albums in a show of defiance over not owning her masters. Defiance and capitalism, let’s say.

And now, it’s 2025, Taylor Swift owns her masters, and the woman we called Cheval has her own update that you’ll hear at the end of this episode.

When you meet a person, it’s normal to introduce yourself, to say, hi, I’m Nora McInerny, or I mean, you would say your name unless your name is Nora McInerny.

I do know there is another one of us out there, and we used to be Facebook friends, but that’s what we do. We meet a stranger, we say hello, we tell them our name. But for today’s guest, it’s not that simple.

So first things first, can you introduce yourself to me?

I’m Cheval. I was formerly a wedding dress designer, but I cannot use my own birth name anymore in any business or commerce or even to publicly identify myself. So Cheval is the name.

Cheval has to choose her words carefully because her birth name doesn’t belong to her anymore.

And saying it on this podcast or anywhere else publicly could get her into legal trouble, which is a fully bananas thing to say. So legally, using her name in public could get her sued. So how do you lose your name?

Well, first, you have to make a name for yourself.

Welcome to New York Fashion Week. We just arrived at the venue. We are setting up.

We are super excited. 12 months of hard work, blood, sweat and sparkle tears.

Like Cheval said, up until two years ago, she was a wedding dress designer and a really popular one. Some of you might actually recognize her birth name, which was also the name of her dress collection.

I’m Hayley Paige, and you’ve seen my gowns on Instagram, Pinterest, or if you’ve been to a wedding in the past 10 years. And I’ve been with JLM Couture since…

From 2011 until 2020, Cheval was a superstar in the wedding dress industry. She showed her gowns at New York Fashion Week. Celebrities like Amy Schumer and Chrissy Teigen wore her designs.

And she made regular appearances on the TLC show Say Yes to the Dress.

God, it’s gorgeous, isn’t it?

On this season of Say Yes to the Dress. If you haven’t seen it, this is a reality show about shopping for wedding dresses. In every episode, a bride travels to Kleinfeld Bridal in New York to buy her perfect wedding dress.

And a lot of brides on the show know what they want before they even get to Kleinfeld. They’ve done research on styles, fits and designers. There is this one dress.

Hayley Paige makes this dress.

It’s called the Hayley Gown.

It’s absolutely stunning. It’s breathtaking. I did a hunt down all over Long Island to find it.

No one had it. I thought to myself one day, oh, look, let me message Hayley Paige on Instagram because she’s going to write back to me.

She wrote back to me.

She said try Kleinfeld.

So here I am today.

Hello. She was so popular among the brides who came on this show that Say Yes to the Dress started having her make cameos.

Okay.

Just go in and make yourself at home.

Surprise.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It’s a Hayley Paige.

Another surprise.

Oh my gosh. And outside of the show, Cheval had one million followers on her Instagram account. At Miss Hayley Paige.

A lot of those followers were brides who loved her dresses. Others were women who weren’t even in relationships, but hoped that one day they could wear a Hayley Paige gown to their wedding.

And like we heard in the clip from the show, she engaged with them. Her job was not just about designing dresses. She loved connecting with the brides who wore them and seeing how the designs made them feel.

So how did she go from one of the most well-known names in her industry to losing her name? It’s a complicated legal tale that begins with a little girl who loved to play dress up.

My grandmother taught me to sew at a very young age, and I was exposed to a lot of creative elements and media, and I always gravitated toward clothing, specifically dress wear, from the earliest I can possibly recall a memory, I think.

And I was a gymnast, so I loved leotards and velvet and sparkle scrunchies and Disney princesses, and all those playful elements that just kind of stuck with me in an imaginative sort of way, and especially as I developed into being a creator and a

Not only was Cheval drawn to sewing, she was throwing herself into it as a little kid.

The first dress I actually consider made was an upcycle from a hot pink 80s dress my mom had in her closet.

And I reconstructed it, redid it, threw it on. It was like a hot pink mini dress with like these lace appliqués on the straps. And I was like, seven.

I was young. And so I definitely was just picking it up right away. Like I’m dress wear, you know?

As she got older and her sewing skills got better, she started producing garments from scratch.

She made dresses for herself. She made dresses for friends. And the type of dress she liked designing and sewing was becoming very clear.

And it’s funny because all of the garments I was making for myself, it was always with this element of it feeling like a wedding dress.

You know, like my graduation dress looked like a wedding dress. So growing up, I just felt like I have something that I can say here that feels unique to me, but it’s appreciated by someone else.

And I got a good little sense of confidence in creating. I felt very much like I could be myself. And that I didn’t have to try so hard.

But I think that natural feeling of I have purpose here, I have a real gift, not in like an entitled sense. It’s just, this is where I feel most myself.

So by the time she’s thinking about where to go to college and what to study, she recognizes that this gift she has could be a part of her college experience. She ends up going to Cornell.

So we do have an IAV Leaguer on this show, but Cornell had a great fashion design program and she was excited about it, but she also had a backup plan.

I would say I had a very eclectic approach to learning design and those skills because I dabbled in pre-med. My dad being a general surgeon growing up, I loved science and math.

And so at Cornell, I kind of had this creative approach to the curriculum where I was doing fiber science so I could take a lot of those pre-med courses just in case. You know, that was almost like my backup.

Like that was a way, you know, I just was like, let’s just do this very thoughtfully.

Imagine how talented you have to be to have this kind of confidence where you love your art so much and feel so secure in doing it that being a doctor is your backup plan. Amazing.

Anyway, Cheval is at Cornell dabbling in pre-med, but also taking lots of design classes.

Being in these intensive studio classes and learning the history of design and pattern making, sewing, portfolio, entrepreneurship, like all that kind of stuff, it just very much excited me.

And I found myself wanting to do extra work, wanting to learn more, finding myself through the curriculum.

And I had some really, really just amazing professors that challenged me, but also helped me get faith in the process that I could make this a viable profession. And I was always sketching.

I was always designing in the sense of we had our set classes, but then we also had this bonus student-led design league that wasn’t part of the curriculum. So it was all work on top of it. So I was making full collections for that.

And I definitely feel like, I’ve discovered who I was a little bit more as a creator in my educational experience, which not everyone gets. I think a lot of times you pull the most from your experiences.

But on a technical and skill level, I learned so much there.

While she’s learning more and more about her craft, she’s also discovering a lot about herself and her style as a designer. And it’s clear to her that designing wedding dresses was what she felt called to do.

Like nothing really trumped that for me in the sense of what’s bigger than that. Like I just was very set and focused and it really is a privilege to know what you want to do with with your life and what you feel like is your gift.

And a lot of it for me comes back to this sentimental attachment through design. I take things very emotionally as I create.

And I think that does lend itself to a really special connection, which is why I did choose to go into an industry that is, it revolves around an emotional purchase and an experience that has a lot of heightened taxed energy in a very loving way.

And so I loved creating for that because there’s this follow through and like a different form of appreciation. So I really relied on that. And it didn’t feel like something that was just a product for product sake.

As her college experience is coming to an end, Cheval knows she wants to work in fashion.

And she gets her first job almost immediately.

I had a designer that was sitting in the audience at our big end of the year school fashion show. And she literally offered me a job after seeing my collection. And I felt so privileged in that moment because I was like, wow, she was here.

She saw my moment. She appreciated it. She offered me a job.

And it was just a great story, of course. So I did go and work for her for about six months, but it was a high fashion house.

At the high fashion house, she learned how to work in a sample room and saw professional designers up close. But after six months, she got an opportunity to work on the design team at Priscilla of Boston, which is a huge bridal brand.

Cheval loved that job. Working in the wedding dress industry was exactly what she hoped it would be. She got to see these elegant, once-in-a-lifetime garments be created and know that she had a hand in that.

The only downside of the job was that all the sewing and manufacturing was done overseas.

And I kind of missed working in a sample room and having a little more of a hands-on experience. And I was doing my own industry research and really just paying attention to whose name kept coming up in the industry.

Once she identifies the leaders in her industry, one company stuck out as a place she wanted to work. We’re not going to say it because of all this legal drama, but you can Google it.

So I actually went after them in the sense of I approached them and reached out to somebody there. I didn’t actually get offered an interview even for almost a year.

When they finally invite her in to talk, they see something in her. So far in her career, she’s been on design teams, helping bring another designer’s idea to fruition.

But in that meeting with the company, they started talking about making her a head designer.

A head designer essentially is the lead visionary of a collection. And in my former case, you know, it was specifically for bridal gowns. And I remember just at the time that I saw that as the big role for me, you know, as the dream job.

When I was a kid, like, I always wanted to be a wedding dress designer. You know, that was my big dream.

And she got the offer. We’ll hear more about the dream job when we come back.

Cheval is 25 years old, and not only has she just been offered a job as a head designer at her dream company, but she’s going to be designing wedding dresses for her own collection, and they’re going to name the collection after her.

2011 is also the same year she hears about a new social media app.

At the time, I did not know what Instagram was. And when I was told by a best friend, you know, oh, there’s this new photo editing app. And that’s what she explained to us.

It’s a photo editing app. You upload photos of your life, similar to Facebook, but it’s a little more visual. And she’s like, you’re so, you know, artistic, you’d be great at this, like, get on it, you know?

And so, of course, I was like, oh, I’ll see what this is about, you know? And I opened my account, and at the time, actually, the handle name I wanted to use was just my first and middle name was already taken.

So I went with miss in front, because that’s a term of endearment my mother, you know, whenever I’m in trouble, or if she’s saying something sweet, you know, she puts the miss in front.

I just want to remind all of us what Instagram was like back in those early years. We were uploading photos of, oh, I mean, like a muffin from the coffee shop, or a badly lit photo of our friends that we put a very, very bad filter on.

Borders, do you remember borders? This was not yet being used as the marketing tool it is today. And when Cheval’s offered this dream job as a head designer at the Bridal Company, social media is never mentioned in the contract.

What her contract does say is that since the collection is named after her, her name will be trademarked to the company.

I definitely understood that with such a large position at a company that there would be a contract.

And to this day, I still understand and feel that it was reasonable that I would have to give the right for my name to be trademarked so that it could be used for the Bridal collection I was designing as a form of protection.

And I also just felt the sense of urgency and pressure to not be combative and want to… I was so focused on my ability and what I felt like I could do for the company.

That, you know, that unique form of just showing up in a room and being a hardworking, ready-to-go type of person was more important than anything else.

And of course, this is something I’ve bonded with so many women over, and why I do feel comfortable sharing it, because it’s not something I feel shame with, but being a people pleaser and wanting to be a team player can a lot of times work against

you, you know. And in a general sense, when you feel like, let’s go all in, let’s make this amazing, you know, you want to have that attitude.

And I definitely don’t feel like I ever did well with confrontation and knowing how to say something without, you know, I don’t want to offend anyone, I don’t want to seem difficult.

She doesn’t want to seem difficult. She wants to be a team player. Yes, she is now in charge of her own collection, but you can hear that she is still thinking of the work as teamwork.

She said, let’s make this amazing. Let us. She looked at this new job as a collaboration.

She designed wedding dresses and the company would provide the overhead so she could focus on the creative part.

And right now, I can only assume that there are thousands of women and other people listening to this podcast nodding, nodding as we all remember a time when we decided to be the team player, to not be difficult, to not seem too invested in our own

I was 25, but I had zero experience in real negotiating or any type of contract law.

Cheval signs that employment contract and gets to work.

For eight years, she works for this company designing collections that she was proud of and that were loved by brides. Her dresses are girly. They are sparkly.

They’re whimsical. They are everything she’s wanted to put out into the world as a designer. And brides don’t just love her dresses.

They love her. Whether people found her on Pinterest when they were researching dresses or through Instagram, brides like the designer behind these dresses they love. Cheval is their age.

She’s bubbly. She’s funny. She’s beautiful.

All this helped her brand skyrocket. This is when she starts appearing on Say Yes to the Dress. Her first wedding was even featured on the show.

And her Instagram following is growing, and the way we’re using Instagram is changing, and it’s becoming a way to build a personal brand.

And in this case, the line between the person and the personal brand and the brand named for a person, it’s blurry at best. Since she opened an account in 2011, she’s always treated it like a personal page.

She shared her work as a designer, but she also shared photos and videos of her friends and her family. So even as her following grows to over a million people.

I was speaking to my mother every day on my personal Instagram at the time. My fiance and I met through the direct messages.

Best friends, people for years that have been just dear, dear friends that believed that was me, my personal account at the time. They were following me, the human being. They were not following a business account in their experience.

She was sharing photos of the dresses she designed and fashion shows she was at.

But it also just felt like she was sharing her life because these posts were sandwiched in between vacation photos and pictures of her loved ones. So for eight years, she built her wedding gown brand.

She’s appearing on TV, her Instagram following is huge. And then in 2019, she and her employer start negotiating a new employment contract because her old one was about to expire.

So I know this is a little bit of a territory where I have to be extremely delicate.

And what I can share is that when I started to negotiate, I felt like the big picture in me just wanted my next contract to accurately reflect the value and the contributions I was making to my former employer at the time.

And the expectations were just very far apart. There was a massive delta I feel, or that I at least experienced, in what I felt like I had, in a sense, earned and performed and done versus what I was actually receiving.

And it’s always scary when you’re that far away. And what became even more scary is how what I have now witnessed and experienced in the legal world, how there could be such a miscalculation in what actually transpired and what my experience was.

And that’s terrifying because it’s… you want to be able to show up and be truthful and accurate.

We only know Cheval’s side of the story when it comes to the negotiations. We reached out to her former employer, but didn’t hear back.

So this is what we know from Cheval, from court documents and from other reporting that we’ll link in our show notes. Well, she viewed her accounts as personal pages. The company wanted more ownership of them.

And this is sticky because if you remember, the collection is named after her and the company trademarked that name.

In a statement to Page Six in 2020, the company said that they and Cheval disagreed over how much freedom she should have over her social media accounts.

For example, because she had such a huge following, she was starting to get brand deals to promote other products on her page, the company disagreed with her doing that. The two negotiate for more than a year.

And on December 15th, 2020, the company sued Cheval in federal court. The lawsuit mainly focuses on the social media accounts, saying the Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok accounts she started and maintained belonged to the company, not just Cheval.

In the lawsuit, the company claims it should be able to dictate the kinds of posts and content that can go on these pages.

I was expecting to be treated and seen as a business woman, especially after my contributions over that, you know, almost eight-year period, and I felt the way I was being treated was not reflective of how vital I was to that organization.

On December 21st, 2020, Cheval posted a video to YouTube. She can’t use her Instagram to communicate with fans because it is the thing at the center of this lawsuit.

It is with a very heavy heart that I announce my resignation as a designer.

This decision comes on the heels of a year and a half long legal battle to negotiate a new contract with Bridal Design House, JLM Couture, one that has resulted in them suing me and convincing a court to grant them temporary control and access over

my Instagram account as well as my TikTok and Pinterest. I am being very cautious about how I use my own name right now.

And her name and how she uses it is another part of the lawsuit.

What’s more, JLM is demanding the right to permanently use my name in the promotion of their products, even after we are no longer working together.

And they are trying to prevent me from using my own birth name in any business whatsoever indefinitely.

The judge grants the company a temporary restraining order that basically says Cheval can’t exclusively run these social media accounts anymore.

And I will never forget the feeling of when the TRO was granted and I had to turn over my passwords within a 24-hour period.

When I saw a post go up on that account, I will never forget the visceral feeling of like the shaking and the drip in your throat and like you feel like you’re going to vomit because it felt like such a misrepresentation and such a…

It felt so inappropriate to me because so many people, that whole following did not know that it was no longer me behind it. And I couldn’t reach them. I couldn’t post to it.

I couldn’t share that. I couldn’t tell people. And to this day, I’ve never had that opportunity to actually address the community that I was with in the trenches for almost 10 years.

Like, at the time, when I was comparing that to not being able to use my own birth name, the social media aspect of it was worse because it felt like such a big misrepresentation.

In an instant, a court took away Cheval’s access to her Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest accounts and the over a million people she communicated with on those platforms. They let her keep her other social media pages that used the same handle.

Up until this point, she’s still an employee of the company. Her contract is valid until August 2022. But after the lawsuit was filed, she knew she didn’t want to stay with the company until then.

And in 2021, she resigns.

The conduct of JLM and Mr. Murphy, in my view, felt controlling, manipulative and bullying. There was an overreaching into my personal life and creative freedoms outside of Bridal Design that very much felt like a violation of my good faith.

I do not wish to subscribe to their business ethics or the way they treat employees and others. I’ve decided that I no longer want to work for a company that does not align with the human qualities that I value and respect the most.

Resigning gave her freedom from the company and the CEO, but it also came with a lot of loss. She lost her name, her social media accounts, her collections, and part of her future.

You’ve been helping women find one of the most important piece of clothing that they’ll ever own or wear, you know? You’ve been creating like moments for people.

Like you’ve been this indelible part of thousands of people’s biggest day, possibly of their lives, right? And then just the you of it is somehow erased, but it’s still up there on the internet. This feels like an episode of Black Mirror.

Yeah, it…

It still like gets me sometimes when I think about it.

Sorry.

I think my… It was my biggest fear because my biggest fear in life is disappointing people. And so…

Oh, hi.

So sorry.

So sorry.

And no one ever cries on our show, so I don’t know why you are.

Yeah. So it was the disappointment that I felt so many women might experience in all that I was going through. Yeah, I mean, it’s sad, and it’s upsetting, like the name, the social media, the, you know, my fiance getting sued, so many things.

But my biggest fear did happen.

It was that I would not be able to deliver to the women, you know, and that these people that have put their magic moments in my hands, you know, and then all of a sudden I was not able to do that, but I had no choice in a way in my mind.

And I thought about people I would be disappointing. And then not being able to share with them what actually had happened or that the message would be interfered with.

So that to this day, it still gets me because I feel like I am trying to make up for lost time.

But at the same time, I cannot actually do what I know I’m capable of because I’ve also been restricted and with a essentially a five year non-compete in which I cannot identify to the trade.

When she resigned, she and her legal team were under the impression that when the employment agreement expired, she could change her name and start designing wedding dresses under the new name.

But instead, she was told by the court that she can’t identify with the trade that her former employer does, which means that she cannot design anything bridal for the next five years.

Not a dress, not a gown, not a bridesmaids dress, not a veil if it’s wedding related, it’s off limits.

This is my livelihood, it is something I have gone all in on. And now, it’s a five year provision. That was the most jarring, and I kind of looked inside myself, and I was like, okay, well, you’ve dealt with some things over the last couple years.

This is the worst one, you know? And like, how are you gonna move forward? You know, and you kind of talk to yourself in a way that’s like, what are the voices in my head telling me?

Because I need to find a way to move on with my life, because up until now, I thought I had a way. I was running on hope, and then it was crushed.

We’ll be right back. Before we recorded this, I assumed the toughest thing about this situation would be losing your name, the one your parents gave you, the one you grew up with and grew into, the one you built a name for.

But for Cheval, the biggest blow of all these big blows is that she is legally barred from designing wedding dresses for five years. Because this was the thing she felt called to do since she was a child.

It would be like Tom Brady not being allowed to play football because of a contract dispute. I hope that’s a good analogy for sports fans who listen to this show. It would be like, who else is good at something?

It’d be like Mr. Rogers being banned from making emotionally intelligent children’s programming. It is a very rare thing to be able to make a living from your passion and your talent.

And creative people just want to create. And yes, we also want to be able to make a decent living at it, but a lot of us are unprepared to be stuck in the crosshairs of creativity and capitalism.

I too have signed contracts without having a lawyer read them. You probably have too.

There are plenty of companies who own your ideas as a condition of your employment, who own your words or your art because you made it on a laptop they gave you, who can prevent you from competing in the same field if you leave their employment.

This story is about a wedding dress designer versus a large company, but it’s also the story of Taylor Swift, of Prince, of a million other creative people with big and small names, who found themselves tangled up in a mess they never envisioned when

they set out to make things. Creativity is also a big business and the gross necessity of being a creative right now means you also have to build a brand for yourself, a brand out of yourself.

And a brand is, apologies to my branding friends who are very passionate about it, it’s a collection of rules, it’s fonts, colors, words you do and do not say to describe what you do or do not make, but people are much more messy and complicated and

alive. One of the reasons this has been so frustrating for Cheval is that there’s not a lot of case law dealing with social media.

It’s likely her case is going to set some sort of precedent for future cases involving social media accounts and who owns them, but her situation unfortunately had to be a test case.

And what does this mean for creatives, for people who already have a hard time distinguishing where their work ends and where they begin? I don’t know, but it feels really scary to me personally.

And talking to Cheval, I was anxious and sweaty the entire time just hearing about what she went through because I could imagine this happening to me. And other creatives I know, I’ve seen it happen. I’ve had similar experiences.

You know, you almost think that you build up this tolerance, right?

And it’s like, okay, I’m good at handling bad news. I’m good at pivoting. I’m good at figuring out stuff.

You know, and as good as you can be, at some point, it has to process, you have to process it and register it. You can’t just keep tolerating it. And so psychologically for me, that’s what I had to do.

I had no choice because I got to a point where I felt like there could be a part where I would harm myself if I didn’t find a real solution to my situation.

And that was the big turning point for me was that I have to completely reinvent, you know, it is a new name, but it’s a new trade. And how can I somehow take what I have learned educationally and experience wise, where can I apply my skill set?

Where can I, you know, take that love of wanting to make women feel great and pretty and whatever it may be strong and all these things, how can I do that and manifest it in a way moving forward now?

Creatives are called to create, and even within the constraints she’s been given, with her original calling being taken from her, she still wants to design.

The backup plan she had in college was to be a doctor, but her backup plan now is to find something else to create. But first, she had to find a new name.

It was a season of waiting, a state of unusual circumstance. Somewhere between the old and the new, I felt borrowed and blue.

Cheval announced her new name in a YouTube video. In it, she and a horse are standing together in an open field. She’s wearing sparkly clothes, of course, and eventually they start running together.

So Cheval is the French word for horse.

And I, in a very simple phrase, just love the way it sounds. It feels like it’s a strong word. It sounds amazing.

It just rolls off the tongue, you know? And I just, I loved it. I’ve always identified with, like, the kingdom phylum of horses, right?

They’re like fantasy world of, like, unicorns and pegasuses and, like, all these things that just feel mystical and powerful and, like, magical run against the wind type things.

I liked that it was this manifestation of taking my power and running with it, you know, and, like, you know, life serves you lemons and you can’t make lemonade, so we’re gonna go out there and find a strawberry field, you know, like, or whatever it

is. Shoes, like, really came to me in such a nice package, and it did make me feel like I had a leg up in the sense of, like, this could be a fresh step, pun intended, and I just ran with it. You know, I was like, I’m gonna do it.

This is it, like, because I could at least feel a sense of self there, and that, like, again, that feeling of, like, I can be myself here even though I’ve felt, like, stripped of so much.

I can still tap into some of those little things that are important to me in my language of creative expression.

Cheval launched her shoe company, She Is Cheval, in October 2022, and these shoes are very fabulous. They’re six-inch rhinestone covered platform heels. They’re pink feathers on stilettos.

They’re a pair of rhinestone cowgirl boots that are mostly clear and were inspired by Dolly Parton. They’re statement pieces. They’re proof that she was never just a wedding dress designer.

She’s an artist no matter what she’s creating.

Yes. It is scary, but it does get better. As hard as it is to say that, like it does actually, and I’ve learned to put it in a box, and no longer afraid of it.

I’m no longer afraid of litigation, and that’s a wonderful thing to say. It’s kind of like do your worst mentality, but it’s also like, I have shoes to make.

I have things to do, and I have women that freaking stood up for me, and I’m going to, gosh, be darned if I don’t show up for them. That’s the triumphant itself for me. It’s like I have a new purpose, and I’m going to go get it, so.

Cheval’s old wedding dress collection still exists at that company.

It is still named after her birth name, but has a new head designer. And some days that’s hard for her, but she knows her wedding gowns were more than just designs. They were her art.

And the thing about art is that it lives on. Once it’s created, it’s no longer yours anyway. It’s out in the world.

People react to it and decide what it means for them. Songs, paintings, sculptures, even wedding dresses. What you make is always bigger than you.

Nothing will change that amazing connection.

And I still want you to go find your dream dress no matter what. You know, like, that still is my message.

But I would also say stronger for it, you know, and as emotional as it can be at times and upsetting and, like, confusing, stronger for it, you know?

And it really will be a more beautiful next chapter because as a creative, I’ve always felt your best work is always your next work.

I promised you an update on this situation and here it is. You know what’s exciting about recording with you all of these years later is I get to say hello to Hayley Paige.

That’s right.

Look at us. Look how far we’ve come.

You get to say to our audience that you are.

I’m Hayley Paige.

So I have goosebumps. I got goosebumps when you made the announcement. Tell us.

Tell us what happened. It’s been years.

I lucked out. I got to be honest. It was a good legal settlement and a number of things kind of had to come together to make that happen.

And very appreciative of the journey because I never realized how much really goes into a lawsuit and how about taxing and I had a divorce once. So I was like, oh, is it like this? But it was not.

It was even on steroids. So it just was a very tumultuous time. And as somebody who’s genuinely, typically positive, it was a very negative thing in my life for a long time.

So, but I ended up getting a tide shift when the former situation had filed for bankruptcy. And then we got put into a bankruptcy court, which is a totally different landscape. So we were able to achieve a positive settlement.

And then I not just got the name back, but I bought the entire rights for the IP. So I can all my designs and my sketches and like all this stuff. I was like, oh, this is so exciting.

I never expected it. So yay.

Oh my God. We love it. And this is you pivoting into shoes is Taylor Swift saying, I’m going to rerecord the masters.

Okay, I’m going to give you something else to love that is also me and my art. And you getting your name and your designs back is Taylor Swift getting the masters back, the original recordings.

Thank you. That is like a pretty serious comparison in any landscape. But I think she really also set a precedent of pivoting and doing what you can with what you have.

And no talent is ever lost, no matter how bad the contract. And she was definitely a big inspiration. So that was very nice of you to say.

Yeah, that’s really beautiful.

No talent is ever lost. And what do you think is the role of creativity in helping you survive something this tumultuous?

You mentioned, you know, if you’ve been through a divorce, people have been through divorce know that, you know, divorce will really show you that marriage is a legally binding contract.

But you typically don’t have the same amount of lawyers involved as you do when you are in a business situation with a giant corporation. But there’s big similarities. Do you think your creativity is what helped you survive this?

Absolutely.

From very early on, I think it was like an SAT question I got, and it was so generic. It was like, what’s the meaning of life?

And even at that time, I thought it’s to create, like humans are made to create things, whether they’re creating little baby humans, or they’re creating conversation, or creating works of art, or whatever it is, they need to be making things.

And so I felt like knowing that is a bare bones requirement for myself, I was like, we’ll just have to find another way. Still, it’s not like the whole door is closed, it’s just I’ve got to express it differently.

And that was very optimistic because I had been doing design of dresses for so long. And while I finally started to get my confidence in it thinking, okay, I can actually do this, then it was stripped.

So it was, okay, I’m going to technically be starting over in a way.

But you never really are starting over because there are all these little things that you can take and the analogy of when something breaks, what’s left, oh, it’s the strongest parts. And then you can kind of rebuild it even stronger.

So that was the mentality for sure.

Yeah. What are the strongest parts for you when everything breaks?

I definitely think it’s creativity first. The idea that you can think outside the box, you know, or you can, it’s limitless. You know, there’s never really this hard line of you can’t go past this.

Like, there’s always a way. So I like that mentality. And then I would say maybe athletics, which is such a weird thing.

But like, walking every day or working out or just being physically active, I think helped me mature some of the demons that I had. You know, just feeling like I can go be productive in the gym, you know, and that’ll make me feel good.

So that was actually a big lifesaver for me. And then the relationships is probably number three. It’s the support system, the people that I just want to keep showing up for and not letting down and the community that I get to be a part of.

So that’s the three.

Yeah, that’s really good.

And I mean, you’re laughing, but it’s like when you go through something like this, you have to laugh at it or you will just be sobbing the whole time because it really is just so, it’s such a physical process to endure this much stress.

It really is like your body needs, like it needs calming and you need support systems.

And we’ve talked a lot, you know, recently on the show too about how work, especially if you care about your work, especially if your work is tied to who you are, it’s so personal too and you need things that can hold you up if that falls away.

A million percent. It’s something I don’t want to say I took it for granted, but early in my career, I definitely made some choices that hindered my dream and hindered my ability to keep developing.

And so that was obviously a hard lesson to learn, but being really self-aware is so important.

And with all the distractions we have these days and all these things are pulling us into a million stuff, or we’re never good enough, and it’s just like so much all the time.

You know, if you can really have a relationship with yourself of like what you really need and brass tacks, like what are these things? I think that’s a really good starting point. Like I almost call it like your emotional home, right?

Like who you are in your brain, is it a happy place to be? Because there’s gonna be moments way down here and moments way up here.

And if like you’re at least here on your normal day to day, you know, it’s like this is kind of where the everything stems from.

So yeah, I like that a little home inside yourself. But so much has changed since our first conversation. And so, you know, even this podcast has changed.

We are no longer a part of a big corporate media structure. When we talked, I was in a similar position, shall I say, and we will both speak opaquely about things because both of us know that we are required to.

And I think listeners understand that we are required to.

And something that I think that people, specifically women, don’t get to talk enough about is when you are building something, when you are excited to be doing something, and someone or an organization that is bigger than you shows interest in it.

It was so easy for me to say, okay, and ask zero questions, not have a lawyer look at what I was signing, because would that be rude? Also, I didn’t have a lawyer. Also, I didn’t have any money.

Am I being rude?

Am I being rude?

Do you think it’s rude to just like ask like what I’m, you know, what I’m signing and what any of these words mean? And I personally felt, like I felt a certain amount of shame around that.

And there were times where that was positioned as like, I wasn’t grateful when a great many things can be true.

And when people, especially women, but when people who are starting out in something, ask me for advice, and when they’re sort of like offered something that feels like, oh, this is like the thing.

I always tell them, there will probably be another thing, and to think a little bit more critically about it, get some more opinions about it. What do you tell people?

Because I’m sure every day you get someone in your inbox who is like, I want to be you, I want to do exactly what you do, and just like give me the blueprint.

Yeah, that’s actually extremely triggering for me in a good way. There’s been so many people in my life that have said, you get one shot at this. You get one chance.

And if you mess this up, you’re messed up. And it’s like this kind of all-in mentality of putting you in a box.

And even when I was going through my lawsuit and I was ready to be rebranding and getting out there, they’re like, you have one chance to do this. And it’s weird because it came from all facets of life, of people kind of saying that.

And I was like, what a scary feeling to go into something thinking this like tremendous weight. And so instead, when I went into shoes, I just said, I’m probably going to be bad at this at first. I’ve never run a small business.

I’m going to make some mistakes. I’m probably going to lose some money. I went in with that mentality because I didn’t want to set the bar like, oh, I design dresses.

So now I can definitely design shoes. Instead, I just was like, I’m going to set my own kind of expectation of it rather than feeling like I have to be this or I’m not going to be successful.

And now that I get to do wedding dresses again, and I’m like, oh my gosh, it’s like my second act, you know, and it’s like twice upon a time, all this stuff is coming back to me and I’m opening like this time capsule.

Like it’s just even more proof that like, there are so many doors out there and there are so many opportunities and that whole cliche of abundance mindset is not a fallacy.

It is so important to actually believe that for yourself and not approach things from feeling scarcity of, if I don’t say yes to this, I will never get an opportunity like this again. Because if that’s the deal, like that, they have all leverage.

Like that’s not exciting because the minute you start to become something bigger than, or you want to go do other things, what happens, you know? So unfortunately, I have to learn that a very long and hard way.

And I try to share that message with people that ask about it. But it’s almost better as somebody who’s on the other side of it to speak on the failures than to speak on what was successful.

Because then they know, like, oh no, you definitely had these moments, and you’ll probably experience them too. So it’s not like, do this and you’ll be this, do this and you’ll be this.

It’s like, don’t do this, because this is what led to that, you know? And so, process of elimination, I guess.

I know, I feel like people often want to know, like, the exact steps that another person took as though they can follow them. And I often say, I’m like, there’s no, you can’t replicate my success because I couldn’t either, right?

Like, there’s no way for me to do that all over again, but I can experience other things. You said, like, there’s no creativity that’s lost, there’s no talent that was lost, it was beautiful.

I’ll play it back, I’ll probably write that down and keep it forever. But I also think it’s like no experience is lost because you can learn so much from it. And I’m wondering what you’ve learned through this really long, traumatic experience.

I, you’re going to relate to this more than anyone, but I think that grief is such a powerful thing.

And when you’re really dealing with loss, or you’re feeling a sense of setback, or something that didn’t go according to the blueprint, and how you imagined it in your brain, and practiced it for your whole life, you know, it really throws a wrench

into things, and it starts to really question your belief in life, and like, just how things are going, you know, and like, how am I doing here, you know? And so you really kind of can get lost in your head of it.

And if there’s a way to really see, as you just said, that like nothing’s ever lost, and that the experience is still there, and like the love was never wasted, that the loss is an example, like the deep pain of a loss is the example of something

having had something so wonderful to feel that opposite effect to it, because life is really lived in contrast. As much as we don’t want to compare ourselves, but it is, because the moment you’re here, you’re not going to appreciate it unless you’ve

been here. And at the moment you’re here, you’re not going to realize how bad it is unless you’ve been here, you know? So it’s, it is just one of those things.

And it’s the day by day of, you know, like everything is temporary, but we get to hold on to these little moments and things that really identify who we are and make us who we are.

Yeah. And, oh god, when we last spoke, you said that you would not be getting married till you could design your own wedding dress. And that’s the first thing I thought of when I saw your announcement.

I was like, sorry.

She’s getting married.

I know.

I know.

Sorry, time set a date, babe.

We are like six years deep into our engagement. And we just started looking at like venues and like sending each other stuff. And he’s like, yeah, like that tree or like, I don’t know about those back glassware, you know?

You had six years and now you’re starting.

It’s like you could have.

Yeah, but we’re doing it. Oh, it’s happening. Yeah.

And it’s exciting that we get to do it now.

And how many looks will you have?

A million.

A million.

Good. Good.

I think that’s exactly right.

I’m thinking like a full collection debut all the day.

I think you should. I think you should. I think you should.

Be as ridiculous as possible.

You should be.

I’m actually going to need to walk down the aisle four or five times. So pause, reset. Here we go again.

Take ten.

Yeah.

I just am so excited to, like, you know, when stuff doesn’t go as planned and then something else happens and then something else happens, you know, it’s like, there’s so many moments in life where you can be delightfully surprised at what’s around

the corner. And I remember last year in April, my fiance went through this crazy, like he almost died. He had this crazy infection in his blood and his heart, and he had open heart surgery.

He’s the most healthy, like he’s like my Kristoff, you know, like he is just such a guy. And to have him go through that part, while I was still in the depths of my stuff, I was like, wow, life is like, woo, this is a very tough time.

And then that very next month, like a settlement happened, and it was like this. And so it’s like the delicacy of life and things that can happen, I think is such a precious thing to accept every day that you never know what it has in store for you.

But to be launching the new Hayley Paige collection in less than a month, it is so surreal. And I’m so excited to be back with Brides and just doing it, so I’m grateful.

Good news for Brides Everywhere. Stay tuned if I get married again, okay? Maybe for the first time, I will wear white.

For the first time, I might wear white, okay?

Okay. I’ve got white dresses. I’ve got a few.

You’re a delight.

I’m so proud of you. I’m so happy for you. And I really am.

So I hope that the people who need to hear this, the people who are struggling with that loss of identity or loss of something, grief for something, something that they have created, something that they valued, things that are not just a person, but

a different part of your life. I hope this reaches those people. So thank you for being here. And I’m always on your side.

Thank you. I’m delighted to say that we can thank Hayley Paige for being a part of this episode, and that if you are a bride or know a bride, you can go shop Hayley Paige dresses right now.

She got it back, she is doing what she loves, and I will be thinking about that sentence that she said for a long time. Like, there is no creativity that’s wasted, there’s no experience that is wasted. And I think above all, there’s always more.

We don’t know what that more is, but there is more. And maybe something that you lost, that you love will come back to you, and maybe it won’t, but maybe it will create space for something else.

And I am not trying to bright side anybody, I am just trying to tell you that life is, if we are lucky long, a lot of things happen, and we are in control of so, so very little.

This is proudly an independent podcast, and that is because we want it to be that way. That’s because we want it to be that way.

So thank you for listening, thank you for sharing this, thank you for rating and reviewing it wherever you get it, all of that stuff, and thank you to our supporting producers for helping us bootstrap this baby, okay?

We don’t have Apple Plus anymore, we don’t have Patreon, all of the archives are everything, all the ad-free episodes, all the bonus episodes, all of my writing is on Substack, it’s linked in every show description, it’s noraborialis.substack.com,

you could support monthly, you could do it, you could do it annually, or you could be a supporting producer and pay a little bit more and get your name in the credits, that is literally the only benefit other than my personal gratitude and

admiration. So big thanks to Jordan Jones, Sheila, Kathleen Langerman, Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey DeMoro, Emily Ferriso, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer McDagle, all caps. Elia

Filiz-Milan, Lindsey Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Cernick, Car Pan, LGS, all caps. Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, my high school gym teacher, Jothia Disopolis, Mad, Abbey Arose, Arose, Arose.

That’s just such a beautiful name. If you’re hearing this and I’m saying it wrong, please tell me. If I’m saying it right, also please tell me.

Elizabeth Berkeley, Kim F, Melody Swinford, Val, Lauren Hanna, Katie, Jessica Latexier, Latexier? Again, never been corrected.

Crystal Mann, Lisa Piven, Kate Lyon, Christina, Sarah David, Kate Beyerjohn, Aaron John, Joy Pollock, Crystal, Jennifer Pavelka, Jess Blackwell, Micah, Jessica Reed, Beth Lippem, Kiara, Jill McDonald, Jen Grimlin, Alexis Lane, David Binkley, Kathy

Hamm, Virginia Labassi, Lizzie DeVries, Jeremy Essen, Andrew Brzezinski, Robin Roulard, Nicole Petey, Monica, my best friend Caroline Moss, Rachel Walton, Inga, Bonnie Robinson, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Penny Pesta, Kaylee, Dave Gilmore, my best

friend from college, and Jacqueline Ryder. This episode, as always, was produced by Marcel Malekibu. Grace Berry does literally everything else. Our opening theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson. You can stream his band Lamar wherever you get music.

And this closing theme song that you’re hearing is by my young son Q, courtesy of the Garage Band app on his iPad Mini.