Sydney Nicole Gifford’s much-publicized lawsuit against fellow Amazon creator Alyssa Sheil—dubbed the “Sad Beige” Lawsuit online- was officially dismissed with prejudice on Tuesday, signaling a decisive win for Sheil and a rare moment of accountability in the copycat-plagued influencer space.
Filed in federal court last April, the lawsuit alleged that Sheil had “deliberately copied” Gifford’s online identity, centered on a now-iconic beige, cream, and taupe aesthetic.
Gifford, who boasts about half a million followers, claimed her style and tone were trademarkable and filed for trade dress and copyright infringement. But Sheil and her legal team at AZA argued that the style was far too generic to be owned, and that Sheil’s work even predated Gifford’s in multiple alleged instances of “copying.”
After more than a year of litigation, Gifford threw in the towel.
“She tried to intimidate me into leaving this industry,” Sheil said in a statement released through her lawyers. “She failed miserably as the truth has prevailed today.”
Her attorneys emphasized that not only did Sheil pay nothing to settle the case, but Gifford needed Sheil’s permission to dismiss it because the case had already progressed so far.
This influencer-versus-influencer clash, once headlined in The New York Times and labeled by Law360 as one of 2025’s “Copyright Cases to Watch,” now serves as a landmark moment in social media law. While influencer drama is often confined to Instagram Stories and TikTok lives, this was a rare test of whether a social media “vibe” could be considered intellectual property.
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Legal observers were skeptical from the jump. “The problem with Gifford’s case,” one IP lawyer noted in December, “was that she tried to copyright a feeling. That’s like trying to own cottagecore or maximalism.”
Despite the media frenzy, the court never ruled on whether a social media aesthetic can be copyrighted, because Gifford backed out.
