Sydney Nicole Gifford, a 24-year-old lifestyle influencer, was busy being her most authentic self when her carefully curated world suddenly shattered. One of her followers had contacted her with terrible news: someone had stolen her vibe.
What does this even mean? Well, that’s the question at play in what may be the saddest, beigest (and possibly most important) lawsuit in influencer history. Gifford, you see, is aggressively fond of neutrals. She likes wearing shades of white, black and cream, and lives in an incredibly organised house where her minimalist decor is also shades of white, black and cream. She reviews Amazon products that fit what is known as the “clean girl” aesthetic and, when her followers buy stuff from her affiliate links, she makes a commission from the sale.
The problem is, someone is said to have stepped on Gifford’s colourless turf. Gifford subsequently filed a lawsuit against the 21-year-old influencer Alyssa Sheil, a former acquaintance, alleging she “replicated the neutral, beige and cream aesthetic of [her] brand identity”. Gifford also accused Sheil of copying her style, as well as her photos and captions, and is now seeking up to $150,000 in damages for lost income and “mental anguish”. The bottom line? Gifford seems to want a court to decree that she is officially the most basic person on the internet.
Trying to claim that wearing the blandest clothes possible is a legally protected look may be an uphill battle. “There are hundreds of people with the exact same aesthetic,” Sheil said, defending herself in a recent interview with the Verge.
Hundreds is an underestimate. On your local high street alone you will see scores of young women who look exactly like Sheil and Gifford. If you spend a few minutes browsing Instagram and TikTok, you will be overwhelmed with shots of what have become known as “sad beige” homes. I will sheepishly admit that my own, apart from the toddler toys, is pretty basic and beige. (I don’t have a design eye and it was just easier that way! Sue me!) Over the past couple of years, there have also been endless think-pieces about “sad beige parenting”: the modern obsession with imposing an austere palette on your offspring. The whole topic is a sad beige cliche at this point.
If anyone has a right to claim ownership over the look it would probably be Kim Kardashian, who lives in a monochromatic mansion she calls her “minimal monastery” and is so terrified of colour that even her kids’ Christmas stockings are beige. But there may be broader market forces behind the trend as well. “An executive at an influencer-management company told me that influencers are encouraged to decorate and dress in neutrals because it allows sponsored products to pop visually in contrast,” the writer and momfluencer expert Kathryn Jezer-Morton wrote in 2022.
And, of course, there’s the fact that beige is timeless. Indeed, despite numerous articles decreeing that young people are finally leaving the sad beige aesthetic behind, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Pantone’s 2025 colour of the year is “mocha mousse”, a warm brown that is essentially another shade of beige.
All of this is not to say that Gifford doesn’t have a case. “In general, copyright doesn’t protect style or a ‘vibe’,” Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School, told me. But, it is theoretically “possible that two specific images or videos could be so similar that one could infringe the other, but it would have to be a case-by-case determination”.
If the court did determine that Gifford had a case, it would be a very big deal. Earlier this year, Bloomberg Law noted that a ruling “could set troubling precedent enabling influencers to wield IP rights to control certain markets on social media platforms by owning color schemes or types of photos”.
Perhaps the biggest issue here, however, is the troubling precedents that have already been set. Airbnb has helped spread a universal sterile style; algorithms and the digital economy have supercharged sameness. If a certain aesthetic does well online then people rush to replicate it. It’s not just influencers’ branded posts – everything from brand logos to advertising looks the same now. One writer has called it “aesthetic consolidation”. Another has described it as the “age of average”. Whatever you call it, we seem to be in a race to the basic bottom.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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