TikTok ‘fashion designer’ goes viral after heartwarming act of kindness for non-binary customer
‘Emergency they/them situation’: Viral ‘fashion designer’ Marcus Pork’s heartwarming refund for non-binary customer (Marcus Pork)
TikTok sensation and viral “fashion designer” Marcus Pork has been praised for redesigning a T-shirt for a non-binary customer, despite his famous “no refunds” policy.
The fashion guru is known for his hand-drawn designs, often featuring LGBTQ+ slogans, or jokes about mental health, including “It’s lesbian time” and “It’s OCD autumn.”
One customer, who bought a T-shirt featuring the slogan “It’s autistic girl summer” for a friend, asked the designer to break his “strict no return/exchange policy” because, their friend came out as non-binary before being given it.
“I was incredibly proud of them but at the same time I felt really bad for buying the t-shirt [saying] ‘girl’ not ‘person’, so in the end I decided not to give it,” the customer wrote in a message Pork posted on Instagram, and which had since gone viral.
Describing it as an “emergency they/them situation”, the fashion designer agreed to supply a second T-shirt, to “honour the replacement that your friend has done with their pronouns”.
Pork made one request: for the person being given the shirt, known only as Camilla, to send a photo of themselves wearing it so he could share their story. He suggested that the customer give the original t-shirt “either to an autistic who is OK with being a girl… or you may burn it”.
The customer said Camilla was “super happy” with the T-shirt, which was remade with their name rather than “girl”, and that they are a “super fan” of the designer.
Pork, who has more than 500,000 followers on TikTok, has become well-known for both his surreal sense of humour and his support for the LGBTQ+ community, with dozens of T-shirt designs catering to queer shoppers.
Speaking to Paste Magazine in 2022 about his “free bleed” period designs, he said: “I became a feminist a long time ago. That’s because I’ve always loved women, and I wanted to be on their side.
“Becoming TikTok famous, it made me very popular, it made me very recognisable. But I’m still the same nice person, and not a diva at all.”
