How Conner Ives Raised Tens of Thousands For Trans Rights, With a Little Help From Troye Sivan, Pedro Pascal, and Haider Ackermann

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.

“I can’t believe a t-shirt is the most popular thing I’ve ever made!” Ives joked over text message after PopBase, the popular X account that documents pop culture goings-on, posted the video of Pascal and linked to his website. Needless to say most brands would pay a lot for this kind of organic exposure.

Ives is known for opulent eveningwear and a sophisticated brand of upcycling—not exactly luxury slogan tees. Still, the t-shirt is part of Ives’s design vernacular. Having worn his dad’s funky tees from the ’80s as a child, he now sources vintage ones, shirring or smocking them into beautifully bizarre tops and blouses.

He didn’t make the “Protect the Dolls” tee thinking that it would become so popular, he made it as something to wear at his show. “It was the night before, and we still had like six or seven looks that needed to be completed, so there were still jobs to be done,” he recalls, joking: “We weren’t sitting around at 11 p.m. like, what do we do now? Let’s make Conner a t-shirt!”

The impetus came from an overarching thought he’d had this season. “I’ve always very purposely steered away from the concept of fashion as politics or politics as fashion, maybe because fashion is already quite self-serving,” he says. “I always thought that what I had to say was in the looks and in the press release, basically. But there was a shift in the last six months where that level of compartmentalization just didn’t really feel relevant anymore,” Ives says, alluding to the way the current US administration has brazenly attempted to erase the existence of transness in the country. A phrase that kept recurring in Ives’s mind was to “say it with his chest,” so he decided to do just that.

He consulted with the model Hunter Pifer, who is trans and often walks for Ives, to make sure he would “get it right.” Meaning, he wanted to make a gesture that was clear, impactful, and of service to the community rather than to himself. (Ives, in fact, was at first reluctant to do this interview, remarking that this “isn’t about [him].”)

“There was an early version that said We <3 the Dolls,” he said, “and as true as that is, words have so much meaning today and that felt like not getting to the meat of it.” He went with “Protect the Dolls” instead. What makes it such an effective affirmation is that Ives struck a balance between a clear political message and a casual colloquialism. “Dolls” is verbiage that we (the industry, LGBTQ+ people, younger folk) use. Ives was speaking to the people in the room, but ended up making a global statement.

The idea of possibly selling the t-shirt and donating the proceeds to charity was a consideration for Ives as he was making it, but it did not materialize until he saw the impact it made after he wore it, with magazines posting about it on their social media and reporters asking him about it backstage. He opened a pre-order for the t-shirt the following morning, using only a backstage photo of him wearing it as the promotion for it on his Instagram (it remains the sole promotional post about it he’s made).

“Fashion in the 21st century has to be reactive, and you need to find a way of being able to do that,” he explains. The t-shirt he wore backstage was deadstock, but his team mobilized to produce new versions. All of the proceeds from the $99 tees (£75.00) go to Trans Lifeline, a US-based, trans-led nonprofit organization that connects trans people to the community and offers them support via a peer support and crisis hotline. Ives had originally considered other LGBTQ+ organizations, but “going directly to trans people with a trans-led organization was the most clear to me,” he says. Ives has sold 1,088 t-shirts as of Sunday, April 13. After production, shipping, and order fulfillment costs, he’s donated over $70,000. A number that continues to grow by the hour.

“When I think of the challenges that trans people in the States are facing right now, I just keep thinking about how scared I was when I was a 12 year old gay white boy in an upper middle class suburb of New York City,” he says, “let alone a trans girl in the middle of America under an administration that’s basically telling her that she doesn’t exist.”

The t-shirt is, in a way, a thank you from Ives to the trans women who inspire him and “who really gave me my start in this industry”: Hunter Pifer, Alex Consani, and Colin Jones, among others. “These girls are legendary, I feel the same excitement watching them as I did at a certain point as a kid in the ’90s watching supermodels on the runways,” he says. “It’s a fantasy I had given up on, really, and I credit Alex for lighting a fire under me the first time she did a show for us.” Ives was close to “giving up,” he says, after feeling disillusioned with the industry, but Consani materialized the dreams and ambitions he had when she took his runway. “I give a lot of credit to the girls, because it’s one thing to make these pieces of clothing,” Ives says, “but it’s a whole other thing to bring them to life.”