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American-born, London-based designer Conner Ives closed out his fall 2025 runway show at London Fashion Week in late February wearing a slogan t-shirt that read “Protect the Dolls.” Ives walked out to take his bow, stretching the tee with both hands as if to underscore his statement. It was an intentional callback to when, in 2005, Alexander McQueen did the same with a top that spelled “We Love You Kate.” Like McQueen, Ives was looking to make a statement for the people in the room, only here he was declaring his love and support to trans women—affectionally referred to as “dolls” in the LGBTQ+ community. That Ives’s t-shirt would become a viral, must-have fashion item worn by pop stars, designers, and actors, raising tens of thousands of dollars for trans lives in the process, is a serendipitous, unexpected consequence.
Troye Sivan took the stage at Coachella on Saturday evening as a guest of Charli XCX wearing the t-shirt, which was sourced by his stylist Marc Forné, who cropped it and paired it with a pair of double-belted 032c jeans and Dr. Martens boots. And he might have just created the gay summer uniform in doing so, considering Ives sold more than 200 t-shirts between the time the pop star took the stage and the designer woke up in London the following morning. A week prior, videos of Pedro Pascal celebrating his 50th birthday alongside Honey Dijon, the American DJ and producer and fashion darling, who is trans, went viral. Pascal, whose sister Lux is also trans, had come by the tee via his stylist Julie Ragolia. A few days before that, on the occasion of his birthday, the designer Haider Ackermann posed alongside Tilda Swinton wearing the t-shirt, which he received from his partner, Justin Padgett, who is Ives’s publicist.
