About

Protect the Dolls is a plain text slogan in support of transgender women and trans rights featured on a white T-shirt by American designer Conner Ives. The T-shirt was first worn by Ives himself at London Fashion Week in February 2025 and became viral after it was worn publicly by multiple celebrities, including Pedro Pascal, Heider Ackermann and Troye Sivan, in April 2025. Proceeds from the sales of the T-shirt go to Trans Lifeline, a support hotline for transgender individuals.

History

In late February 2025, American fashion designer Connor Ives conceived the idea of a T-shirt with a slogan in support of transgender women. After going through iterations of the slogan, Ives chose "Protect the Dolls," written in all caps in Big Caslon serif. "Doll" is an affectionate term for a transgender woman (shirt design shown below).^[1]

Ives created the original shirt the night before his show at London Fashion Week, wearing it himself while walking down a runway at the end of the show on February 23rd, 2025 (photograph of Ives wearing the T-shirt shown below).

After multiple requests to purchase the shirt followed in the days following the show, on February 26th, 2025, Ives started selling "Protect the Dolls" shirts for £75, with approximately 70 percent of the price being donated to a nonprofit community group and support hotline, Trans Lifeline.^[2]

Online Presence

On April 9th, 2025, the X^[3] news account @PopBase shared a photograph of actor Pedro Pascal wearing the T-shirt at his 50th birthday party. The post (shown below) garnered over 2,300 reposts and 38,000 likes in two weeks.

In the following weeks, more celebrities were spotted wearing T-shirts with the slogan. Notably, on April 12th, 2025, singer Troye Sivan wore the shirt on stage during Charli XCX's Coachella set (photograph shown below).^[4]

Other celebrities seen wearing the shirt include designer and influencer Haider Ackermann,^[5] Addison Rae, ^[6] actress Tilda Swinton and rapper bbno$. ^[7]

Multiple users on X shared photographs of themselves wearing the shirt in mid-to-late April 2025. For example, on April 11th, X^[8] user @mykelgiveemhell posted two photographs and a video of themselves in it, which received over 360 reposts and 4,200 likes in two weeks.

On April 15th, 2025, designer Conner Ives made an Instagram^[9] post about the T-shirt's viral popularity, sharing photographs of celebrities wearing the shirt and images of produced shirts being packaged for delivery. The post (screenshot shown below) garnered over 52,000 likes in 10 days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References