Sales of the shirt topped £200,000 within weeks, and every penny heads straight to Trans Lifeline.
Pedro Pascal arrived at the London premiere of Thunderbolts in a simple white T-shirt that spoke louder than any tuxedo. The actor—fresh from his fiftieth-birthday celebrations, where he wore the same top—stood before the cameras in Conner Ives’s “Protect The Dolls” design, a slogan that salutes transgender women and funnels every sale to the nonprofit crisis line Trans Lifeline.
The shirt’s journey began in February, after Ives closed his fall 2025 show in London wearing the tee instead of a showpiece look. The American-born designer had spent the previous weeks watching U.S. lawmakers roll back protections for trans people. “The girls who walk my show are trans and I have so many friends that are trans women in the United States,” he told The New York Times, which dubbed the tee a “sensation.” “It reached a point where I couldn’t really remove myself anymore.”
That single bow sparked a snowball. Within hours of the show, Ives placed the shirt online, pledging full proceeds to Trans Lifeline. Support was immediate and sustained: “It has now gotten to a point, like this past week, where we were putting up like 1,000 units in the morning and by the mid-afternoon they were gone,” Ives said in the same interview. Net sales soon climbed to just under £200,000, and by late April the designer confirmed that donations had passed the $250,000 mark. Importantly, every prominent wearer—Pascal included—paid retail price. “No press loans here,” Ives wrote on Instagram.
For Pascal, the message lands close to home; his sister, Lux Pascal, came out as trans in 2021. By choosing the tee for both a private birthday party and a Marvel red carpet, he brought the conversation from family circle to global stage. Online, screenshots of his appearance raced across feeds, amplifying the call to “Protect The Dolls” far beyond fashion insiders.
Ives’s stance also resonates in the U.K., where a recent Supreme Court ruling narrowed the definition of “woman” to biological sex under the Equality Act. “Given the US Federal government’s current hostility towards trans people, support like this is needed now more than ever,” Ives wrote on his website, a statement that rings just as true on this side of the Atlantic.
The shirt is currently sold out, though a fresh pre-order list is open on the designer’s site. Ives urges shoppers to avoid knockoffs that reroute funds away from Trans Lifeline. Until restocks land, Pascal’s viral moment keeps the focus firmly on trans rights—and on a plain white T-shirt that carries far more weight than mere cotton.
