September 29 2025, 08:15 
Fashion designer Conner Ives’ viral ‘Protect the Dolls’ t-shirt has raised over $600,000 for trans nonprofit Trans Lifeline since February.
Ives announced the figure in a September 19 Instagram post. “I have never been more proud of my team, the supporters of this wider movement, and the countless people that bought this tee,” he wrote in the post’s caption. “This t-shirt has changed my life, and I’m hoping it will in due course change so many others. In times like these where every day feels more perilous than the last, I am moved by the humanity of this movement and what it has made possible. This is only the beginning.”
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The t-shirt became a sensation almost immediately after Ives first wore one during the finale of his Fall/Winter 2025 ready-to-wear show in London back in February. But the shirt was not meant to be part of the collection. As the New York Times reported in April, Ives, intending to wear “a T-shirt that says something” for the presentation, put the tee together the night before to show solidarity with trans people amid ongoing attacks on their rights in both the U.S. and the U.K.
“We woke up the next morning and our whole inbox was just people being like, ‘Where do I buy this?’” Ives told the paper. “It all happened so quickly.”
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According to the shirt’s page on Ives’ eponymous label’s website, that “groundswell of interest” led the designer to start selling the tee for $99, with proceeds going directly to Trans Lifeline, which provides services, including a crisis hotline, to the trans community in the U.S.
The shirt, which is currently sold out, quickly became one of the season’s most coveted pieces. Celebrities like Troye Sivan, Pedro Pascal, and Madonna have all been photographed wearing it. According to Vogue, by mid-April, Ives had sold 1,088 tees, raising over $70,000 for Trans Lifeline, and that figure has grown exponentially since then.
According to Ives’ September 19 post, the money will not only fund Trans Lifeline’s services, it will also enable the organization to “[mobilize] funds through microgrants to trans people all over the United States for the first time since 2023.”
The post also included a statement from Trans Lifeline executive director Kai Alivar Horton, who extended the organization’s gratitude to everyone who has purchased and worn the “Protect the Dolls” t-shirt.
“Your generosity and belief that trans people, and most specifically trans femmes and women, deserve to live in a world that protects, celebrates, and resources us, is truly the most hope-inducing gift we can receive as an organization,” Horton wrote. “Our work is withstanding many political storms, our entirely trans team knows intimately the deep levels of violence and abuse that this political regime is enacting on our communities. Your donation has helped to see a future that securely employs our people during a time of so many systematic attempts to erase us.”
“With your generosity, we can and will sustain,” Horton added.
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