In the week leading up to Conner Ives’s late February runway show at London Fashion Week, amid a seemingly never-ending to-do list of model fittings and adding finishing touches to each look, the 28-year-old designer wrote himself a reminder in his phone’s Notes app: “make a T-shirt that says something.”
The night before the show, that was the one thing he still had on his list. He grabbed a white T-shirt from a pile of deadstock and used heat-transfer paper to print a slogan that described what he was feeling at the moment: “Protect the Dolls.” The whole process took two or three minutes.
He then wore that shirt — which uses an affectionate term for trans women — down the runway when closing out his show. The shirt went on to steal the spotlight.
“We woke up the next morning and our whole inbox was just people being like, ‘Where do I buy this?’” Mr. Ives said in a phone interview from his apartment in London. “It all happened so quickly.”
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Since then, the shirt, which sells for roughly $99, has become a sensation, seen on celebrities like the “Last of Us” actor Pedro Pascal, the singer Troye Sivan and the designer Haider Ackermann. Most of the proceeds from the sales are being donated to Trans Lifeline, a nonprofit community group and crisis hotline. And demand for the shirts has thus far surpassed his team’s capacity to fulfill the orders.
Political slogans on clothing, particularly on T-shirts, have been a growing trend, creating a perfect opportunity for the “Protect the Dolls” shirts to thrive. “In the modern day, what is more ubiquitous than the graphic T-shirt?” Mr. Ives said.
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