Why Are These ‘Clean Girls’ Fighting?

Last week, a judge in Texas dismissed a copyright lawsuit filed over a year ago by Sydney Sloneker, an influencer who’d accused a fellow content creator of stealing her vibe. The original suit alleged that Alyssa Sheil had been copying Sloneker’s content, which included featuring the exact same Amazon products — furniture, clothing, décor — in a similar muted, beige aesthetic on her profile. According to Sloneker, Sheil’s posts were so similar to her own that Sheil had siphoned off some of her sales, and she wasn’t earning as much as she would have been without her alleged copycat.

Following the dismissal, Sloneker posted a five-minute video to TikTok on Thursday — the first time she’s acknowledged her suit on the feed. “A lot of articles are claiming I’m suing over a beige aesthetic,” she began. “I have never claimed to own beige, and I’m not suing anyone over a color or a trend.” Well, good. But that’s not all. “There’s so much more to the story that hasn’t been told,” she added. “I’ve been silent for two years and I’m finally ready to tell you my story.” So … what is the story, exactly? Let’s dive in.

Let’s back up. Who are these girls?

Sydney Sloneker (whose maiden name, Gifford, is used in the lawsuit) and Alyssa Sheil are both fashion and lifestyle content creators. In 2023, they were both living in Austin, Texas, posting shopping content to TikTok and Instagram. Sloneker’s content could be described as muted and monochromatic, and she even poked fun at her beige aesthetic by hashtagging “sad beige home” on some of her videos. “It is a sad beige home, and I like it,” she told the Verge in November. Both she and Sheil have been described as “clean girls” — a minimalist, neat aesthetic that prioritizes posting about self-care and dressing in neutral tones.

Okay, and why are they fighting?

According to the Verge, both Sloneker and Sheil agree that they met up to go shopping and take photos a couple of times in 2023. After that, their stories differ. Following their hangouts, Sloneker later told the New York Times, she noticed that Sheil had blocked her — Sheil’s reasoning, per the Verge, was that Sloneker and the third influencer they were hanging out with had made her feel unwelcome.

But Sloneker has a different theory. She says that, shortly after she got blocked, she started hearing from her followers that they had mistaken Sheil’s profile for hers. After finding a workaround to see Sheil’s profile, Sloneker says she noticed that Sheil’s content had suddenly started looking suspiciously like hers — similar outfits, similar aesthetics, and similar products to those she had linked to her Amazon storefront. And it wasn’t just cream bouclé stools — Sloneker claims in her latest video that Sheil has copied things like her tattoos, her hair, and her merch designs.

In January 2024, Sloneker told the Verge, she sent Sheil cease-and-desist letters and copyrighted several of her social-media posts. A few months later, after not seeing any changes on Sheil’s account, Sloneker filed the suit in Texas, accusing Sheil of “willful, intentional, and purposeful” copyright infringement. In the documents, she reportedly included her cease-and-desist letters on top of nearly 70 pages of side-by-side screenshots comparing their social-media posts.

Sheil promptly filed a response to Sloneker’s suit in court, where her lawyers reportedly argued that neither woman’s look is “original” and claimed that, actually, Sheil was the one being copied. In the response, Sheil also claimed Sloneker was bullying and harassing her and referenced a quote attributed to Kim Kardashian (though the Verge notes it’s unclear whether it really came from her): “People only rain on your parade because they’re jealous of your sun and tired of their shade.”

Why was Sloneker’s lawsuit dismissed?

This suit ended up being kind of a big deal, since there’s no influencer-specific precedent here. Rose Leda Ehler, a litigator at the Los Angeles law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, told the New York Times that she didn’t think the case would make it to trial or have any impact on trademark law. “I suspect that there will be discussions outside of the courtroom and the parties will probably figure out or resolve the matter short of it going all the way to trial,” she said.

Well, she was pretty much right. On Wednesday, both parties asked the judge to dismiss the case, writing that they’d reached a “settlement agreement.” In a video posted the following day, Sloneker says she chose to walk away due to the time, money, and mental work it would have taken to fight through it. “If I were to continue fighting this and bring it to a trial, I would have to spend up to $500,000. I can’t do that,” she said. “I am a new mom and I can’t spend that kind of money on a lawsuit, much less the time that it would take away from my baby and my family.”

“I believe her intention was to look so similar to me and copy my posts so similarly that she could profit off of my business,” she added on TikTok, explaining that this lawsuit was also about “Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations, trade dress infringement, and misappropriation of likeness” — all terms that boil down to intellectual property and copyright infringement.

She added that TikTok had removed Sheil’s posts that she considered infringing on her copyrighted posts, which she described as a “huge step in TikTok taking creator’s rights seriously.” Also, she says, TikTok took down Sheil’s original account, so the posts are no longer on her new profile. (It’s unclear when Sheil started a new account, but the first video on her profile is from December 2024.)

In a statement sent to the Cut, Sloneker’s attorneys rejected the notion that this dismissal is “a ‘total victory’ and proof that Sloneker’s claims were ‘frivolous.’” They pointed out that the settlement is “neither an exoneration nor a comment on the strength of Mrs. Sloneker’s claims.”

And what does Sheil say?

In a statement released by her attorneys following the suit’s dismissal, Sheil said, “This was about more than just me. This sets a precedent that young influencers can fight back and not give into bullying.” She added that “Ms. Gifford tried to intimidate me into leaving this industry. But she failed and the truth prevailed.”

Sheil’s lawyers also said they “had hard proof that Ms. Gifford’s claimed works were not original and her story simply was not true,” adding that, for a lot of the posts Sloneker accused Sheil of copying, “Ms. Sheil actually took her photos and videos first.”

Sheil hasn’t said anything on her personal social profiles about the lawsuit but posted a cryptic video to TikTok on Wednesday when the lawsuit was dismissed, captioned, “The hardest year of my life is officially over.” I’ll say!

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