How The Viral ‘Protect the Dolls’ and ‘Promote Homosexuality’ T-shirts Were Made
The Run-Through with Vogue
Vogue
4.2 • 724 Ratings
🗓️ 26 June 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Happy Pride, divas! This week on The Run-Through, pod regular and guest host José Criales-Unzueta is joined by two fabulous designers: Conner Ives and Willie Norris. From Conner’s viral “Protect the Dolls” tee — seen on everyone from Troye Sivan to Pedro Pascal — to Willie’s unforgettable “Promote Homosexuality” moment that's still making waves, the trio get into how these pieces made real impact and the new lives they’ve taken on thanks to the internet. They also dish on the corporate rainbow-washing of Pride and whether or not commercial “representation” is always a good thing.
Plus, Chioma and Chloe break down Zohran Mamdani’s big win in the New York democratic mayoral primaries and the must-see moments from Paris Men’s Fashion Week so far!
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| 0:00.0 | This is The Run Through. I'm Chloe Mow. |
| 0:07.5 | And I'm Cermanardi. |
| 0:09.0 | Choma, I'm so excited for today's show. |
| 0:12.5 | Our most esteemed colleague, Jose Crealis Unzweeta, spoke to two designers that we love, |
| 0:19.0 | Connor Ives and Willie Norris, about two very iconic t-shirts |
| 0:23.4 | that they have made. Conner's t-shirt, Protect the Dolls, has been everywhere. Pedro Pascal |
| 0:29.3 | famously wore it and Troy Savon wore it to perform with Charlie XEX at Coachella. It has raised a ton |
| 0:35.4 | of money for Translifeline, a nonprofit providing crisis support for |
| 0:39.6 | transgender individuals, which is amazing and very needed at this political moment. And Willie Norris |
| 0:46.2 | famously made a shirt a few years ago that said promote homosexuality, which also took the |
| 0:51.9 | world by storm. I actually went to my friend Catherine's wedding, Catherine Bernard, who Chalmanos used to work at Vogue with us, and she and her wife are friends with Willie. |
| 1:03.5 | And so Willie had promote homosexuality t-shirts for people at the wedding, and it was emplaced on everything. |
| 1:09.5 | I love that. |
| 1:10.0 | Which was perfect in Greenwich, Connecticut. |
| 1:14.6 | Jose, Willie, and Connor also discussed the state of pride fashion, the rainbow washing, as our colleague, Christian Allaire, called it in a recent story for vogue.com of corporate clothing brands during Pride Month. And I really |
| 1:29.8 | can't wait for everyone to listen to this Convo. I thought it was really interesting because |
| 1:33.1 | I feel like there's two conversations that have been happening for me culturally. It's like |
| 1:38.3 | the very insider in the Vogue office of a lot of the like the Vogue gays are like, we don't need pride fashion. |
| 1:46.2 | It's too corporate. |
| 1:47.8 | Stop trying to use Pride Month to sort of push forward corporate agendas and marketing. |
| 1:54.8 | But then outside of that, I'm seeing, we're all seeing such rollbacks on DEI. |
| 2:00.5 | And we've even heard from our commercial |
... |
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