Three words, one T-shirt and a fight that is bigger than fashion.

The night before unveiling his Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, Conner Ives, an American-born, London-based designer, stood over a heat press with transfer paper and printed a plain white T-shirt. Across the chest, in stark black letters, it read: &lsquo;PROTECT THE DOLLS&rsquo;.
For years, Ives had resisted the designer slogan tee, wary of its tendency toward empty grandstanding. However, this time felt different. The &ldquo;dolls&rdquo;, his affectionate nod to friends in the trans community, borrowing from 1980s Black ballroom vernacular, are facing a global tide of rollbacks: healthcare restrictions in the US and rising anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across Europe, among others. &ldquo;It just felt like this moment of synchronicity where I knew I had to say something,&rdquo; he told reporters after the show.

The message has since outgrown the catwalk. &lsquo;PROTECT THE DOLLS&rsquo; now lives on the torsos of Pedro Pascal, Tilda Swinton and countless others, its status cemented as a sell-out piece, available only on pre-order. The urgency sticked into Ives&rsquo;s shirt places it firmly within the T-shirt&rsquo;s long tradition, not as a wardrobe staple, but as a billboard of protest, solidarity and demand.
Elsewhere in the season, Marie Lueder is making waves with a tank top that declares: &lsquo;Men are so BACK&rsquo;. &ldquo;I knew I&rsquo;d get cancelled for this,&rdquo; the German designer jokes. The phrase, lifted partly from TikTok&rsquo;s viral &lsquo;We are so back&rsquo; mantra and partly from the re-emergence of right-wing politics in the US and the far-right AfD in Germany, lands with equal parts satire and sting. &ldquo;Humor is important as a weapon when you feel powerless,&rdquo; she says.

The T-shirt is inherently democratic: industrial in origin, genderless by design, cheap, accessible and the perfect canvas for pinning belief directly to the body.

In the end, the London-based designer did not get cancelled. What she did get was more press than usual and a place in a long fashion tradition. From Dior&rsquo;s now-iconic &lsquo;We Should All Be Feminists&rsquo; tee to Willy Chavaria&rsquo;s &lsquo;How We Love Is Who We Are&rsquo; (created with Tinder and the Human Rights Campaign to spotlight the 489 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the US last year), slogan shirts have always risen with turbulent times. Designers themselves often wear the message, becoming both author and billboard.
And honestly, it makes sense, after all. The T-shirt is inherently democratic: industrial in origin, genderless by design, cheap, accessible and the perfect canvas for pinning belief directly to the body. Few understood this better than Vivienne Westwood, who weaponized the garment to provoke and destabilize. From her Seditionaries-era &lsquo;DESTROY&rsquo; tee to the 2003 &lsquo;I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don&rsquo;t arrest me&rsquo;, Westwood collapsed politics and fashion into one defiant gesture. Katherine Hamnett sharpened that instinct in 1982 when she stood before Margaret Thatcher in a white tee reading &lsquo;58% DON&rsquo;T WANT PERSHING&rsquo;, a pointed protest against US missile deployment in Britain. Both women proved the T-shirt power lies in an economy of words: sharp, unornamented and impossible to ignore.

As Dal Chodha, a writer, editor and educator at Central Saint Martins has put it: &ldquo;As we have continuously been told, the body is political. Everything is political.&rdquo; The immediacy of the T-shirt makes if ideal site for that politics. Jenny Holzer&rsquo;s early works, printed with terse, unsettling truths, turned wearers into walking aphorisms of dissent. ACT UP&rsquo;s &lsquo;Silence = Death&rsquo; T-shirts, worn amid the AIDS crisis, transfigured mourning into public defiance, grief spelled out on the very bodies under threat.
The same lineage now extends to Thailand, where designer Nalin Satearrujikanon, creative director of Nalinchan Studio, has launched a campaign under the slogan &lsquo;The Future is Ladyboy&rsquo;. A deliberate riff of &lsquo;The Future is Female&rsquo;, the phrase is rooted in something more personal. While Nalin first heard &ldquo;ladyboy&rdquo; used to describe her, it was only after learning English that she fully grasped its meaning. Rather than recoil, she reclaimed it. In that กะเทย (kathoey) has long wielded as insult, Nalin&rsquo;s mission reframes it as pride. On Instagram, she wrote that the campaign &ldquo;challenges gender stereotypes and celebrates gender fluidity. It aims to promote acceptance, inclusivity and equal rights for individuals who identify as transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming. The message behind the design encourages people to embrace diversity and celebrate differences.&rdquo; All designers understood that once inscribed, the body itself becomes protest.
Of course, even the most urgent slogan is not immune to the churn of fashion. Conner Ives&rsquo; &lsquo;PROTECT THE DOLLS&rsquo; tee, priced at USD91, moves quickly across fashion circles, celebrity wardrobes and activist communities alike. However, to wear a message across your chest is to both declare and participate, a gesture that risks being swept into the same seasonal cycles that propel fast fashion trends. Who can forget the &lsquo;This is What a Feminist Looks Like&rsquo; tee, produced by Elle and Whistles, later dogged by allegations of sweatshop production in Mauritius? (The Fawcett Society firmly denied this, insisting the shirts were made ethically.) The controversy was a reminder of how swiftly political slogans can lose their bite once entangled in the machinery of commerce.

What feels vital today can feel dated tomorrow, especially when visibility is fueled by celebrity endorsement. How much of the &lsquo;PROTECT THE DOLLS&rsquo; phenomenon refracts genuine solidarity and how much reflects the gravitational pull of Pedro Pascal and Tilda Swinton? As Dal Chodha notes, &ldquo;Many wear band T-shirts without even knowing the music.&rdquo; The protest tee amplifies, but amplification is fickle. &ldquo;What happens to the T-shirt when the mood is different?&rdquo; Chodha asks. &ldquo;When a new thing needs our voices?&rdquo;
Yet, it would be unfair to dismiss its impact. Each sale of Ives&rsquo; shirt supports Trans Lifeline, a grassroots and trans-led organization offering crisis and community support. Ives himself echoes Katharine Hamnett&rsquo;s credo that a successful T-shirt does not just make you think; it pushes you to act. &ldquo;We need to direct these questions to trans women,&rdquo; he insists.
The thing about slogan T-shirts is that it can open a conversation, but it cannot conclude it. As Chodha cautions, to stylize an idea is always to risk hollowing it out. For the dolls, those living at the sharpest edge of social and political hostility, protection cannot come from visibility alone. Their safety demands more than fabric and slogans; it requires listening, asking and acting with sustained, deliberate care.

How the Slogan T-Shirt Became Fashion’s Loudest Protest

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