Protect the Dolls

Protect the Dolls, usually stylized in all caps,[1] is a slogan in support of transgender women that was introduced on a viral white T-shirt by American fashion designer Conner Ives. First appearing in public at the end of his London Fashion Week show on 23 February 2025, it was worn by several celebrities including Pedro Pascal and Troye Sivan. Ives came up with the phrasing the night before his show, and it has since become a phrase adapted by the wider LGBTQIA+ community.

Background

The term "doll" is slang within the transgender and wider LGBTQ community, used to positively refer to a feminine trans woman.[2] This use originated in ballroom culture among Black and Latina trans women in the 1980s.[3]

The T-shirts have followed the election of Donald Trump, who had recently declared that the government would only recognize two genders.[4] Ives himself is friends with several transgender women and the women who walk his shows are transgender.[5] He generally avoided merging his fashion career and politics, though felt a "shift in the last six months where that level of compartmentalization just didn’t really feel relevant anymore," comparing the experiences of transgender people with that of his own as a teenager in an upper-middle-class suburb of New York City and concluding that trans people were facing worse problems.[6]

The T-shirts came amidst a rise in popularity for T-shirts with slogans in general.[5][7] Prior to the release of the T-shirt, Ives has said he was selling 50 to 60 orders a month.[5]

History

Design, London Fashion Week and initial virality

The T-shirt was created by American fashion designer Connor Ives. During the week leading up to his runway show at London Fashion Week in late February 2025, he wrote in his phone's Notes app "make a T-shirt that says something." The slogan itself was workshopped; an early idea was "We Heart the Dolls", in reference to the "I Love New York" slogan, which Ives discarded as he did not feel the need to promote his "love for [his] trans friends" on a T-shirt and wanted something closer to a call and response.[5] Another idea was also "For the Dolls".[1] He saw the protection of his trans friends, however, as "taken for granted",[5] though did not want to create a "feeling of peril."[4] Model and regular collaborator of Ives, Hunter Pifer, who was being fitted in the studio as he workshopped the shirt, pushed him to pick "Protect the Dolls".[1] "Dolls" is an affectionate term for a transgender woman,[5] linking to 80s ballroom culture.[4] Ives found the word "familiar," and "approachable". It is a term that is ubiquitous in some LGBTQ circles, but as of April 2025 is less known to mainstream culture. He has said he will leave it "up to the interpreter to decide" whether the term implies a fixation on physical appearance, plasticity, or collectability.[1]

He proceeded to create the original shirt the night before the show, finding a deadstock white T-shirt and using heat-transfer paper to print "Protect the Dolls" in all caps, taking two to three minutes to do so.[5] The slogan appears in black in the Big Caslon serif typeface in all caps and is left-justified.[1]

At the end of his show on 23 February 2025,[1] Ives wore the shirt himself when walking down the runway,[5] a move inspired by the similar way Alexander McQueen ended his Spring/Summer 2006 runway show with a T-shirt bearing the words "We Love You Kate", in reference to Kate Moss who was gaining negative attention from the British tabloids at the time.[1]

The next morning, Ives woke up to 400 emails[1] filling his "whole inbox", asking where to buy the T-shirt.[5] Starting from 5pm GMT on 26 February 2025,[4] he sold them for £75[6] (around US$99); about 30% of the price was being used for raw material costs, production, printing, and shipping, with the rest of its proceeds being donated to the nonprofit community group and crisis hotline Trans Lifeline.[5]

Wear by celebrities and high sales

Several celebrities wore the T-shirt, and have broadcast this publicly. Pedro Pascal, whose sister Lux Pascal is transgender, was photographed wearing it next to DJ Honey Dijon[1] on his 50th birthday. Designer Haider Ackermann, partner of Ives' publicist, posed with the shirt next to actor Tilda Swinton,[6] who ordered several of the shirts herself.[1] Singer Troye Sivan wore it during his Coachella 2025 guest performance in Charli XCX's set,[6][5] and later posed next to her as well as Lorde and Billie Eilish in a photo he posted to Instagram.[1] Sivan's performance helped sell 200 pieces of the T-shirt in less than 24 hours.[6] Tate McRae also wore it,[8] as did Addison Rae.[9]

By 18 April Ives had sold £190,235 (about US$252,600) of the T-shirts, and said he was "putting up like 1,000 units in the morning and by the midafternoon they were gone."[5] Two drops of the T-shirts, nearly 2,000 of them, sold out by 20 April, with further pre-sales taking place before a planned indefinite opening of sales. These were possibly spurred by a negative reaction to the UK Supreme Court ruling that transgender women would not be defined as "women" for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010.[1] Pascal wore the shirt again in response to this at the London premiere of the film Thunderbolts* on 22 April.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l O’Neill, Shane; Tashjian, Rachel; Gupta, Gaya (2025-04-17). "What's in a T-shirt slogan? The story behind 'Protect the Dolls.'". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 2025-04-18. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  2. ^ Troia, Quinn J. (2023). Cyborgs, Dolls and Passing Narratives: Trans-femininity in PopularMusic (Thesis). Lewis Honors College Thesis Collection, Lewis Honors College, University of Kentucky. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
  3. ^ Hansford, Amelia (2025-04-25). "'Protect The Dolls' t-shirt meaning: Why do people call trans women 'dolls'?". PinkNews. Retrieved 2025-04-26.
  4. ^ a b c d "Buy Conner Ives' Protect the Dolls t-shirt to support trans people". Dazed. 2025-02-26. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Gupta, Alisha Haridasani (2025-04-18). "A Simple Slogan Creates a Shirt and a Sensation". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  6. ^ a b c d e Lai, Rosana (2025-04-16). "The story behind the viral 'Protect The Dolls' tee you keep seeing everywhere". Glamour UK. Archived from the original on 2025-04-19. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  7. ^ Gallagher, Jacob (2025-04-12). "The Digestible Politics of the Message Tee". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  8. ^ Thompson, Sophie (2025-04-17). "This is why your favourite celebrities are wearing 'Protect The Dolls' t-shirts". indy100. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  9. ^ Carter, Ashleigh (2025-04-20). "Addison Rae Wears Viral 'Protect the Dolls' Shirt to Coachella". Teen Vogue. Retrieved 2025-04-21.
  10. ^ Evans, Greg (2025-04-23). "Pedro Pascal wears 'Protect the Dolls' T-shirt in wake of UK ruling on trans women". The Independent. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
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