How Fashion Is Getting Friendlier

From homegrown labels to Manhattan’s top designers, more brands than ever are realizing that people with conditions want to be fashionable too.

One day, former North Carolina State assistant football coach Don Horton came home and told his wife Maura that he could no longer button his own shirt. The coach had Parkinson’s, and that day, one of his team players had buttoned his shirt for him. Maura remembers, “It haunted me, to tell the truth.” He was leaving for a business trip the next day, and they were strategizing how he could keep buttoning his shirts away from home. “He was going through so many changes I couldn’t help with—but this, I could.”

Maura had noticed that the concept of a magnetic iPad cover could be applied outside of electronics, to make shirts easier to button. She applied washable magnets underneath his shirt buttons. Then, she expanded her sights to helping more people with arthritis and a spectrum of afflictions that make buttoning painful or difficult.

“I decided to take a huge leap of faith, and we started a company,” she said. To date, her company MagnaReady has sold more than 10,000 shirts, and they will soon appear in retail stores through a deal with PVH, which owns Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein.

More brands than ever are realizing that people with chronic conditions want to feel fashionable too.

MagnaReady is part of a growing group of companies that give fashionable solutions to consumers with specific health needs.

Care+Wear launched two years ago, also based on a personal connection, and they dub themselves “healthwear.” The founders had seen family members and friends unhappy about the unfashionable tube socks they had to wear over their PICC lines while getting chemotherapy. Now, they sell antimicrobial covers in a variety of colors, in addition to shirts that accommodate patients with ports. Covers and shirts are now sold in Walgreens, and available to patients at a number of hospitals including the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, as well as hospital gift shops nationwide.

“I do think it’s a trend,” Horton says. “Sometimes, it’s still on the cheaper manufacturing side of things. There have not been any luxury brands that have tackled it. None of the large brands have fully embraced it.”

This is exactly the gap that many of these companies are hoping to bridge. Horton has noticed that clothing for patients has focused on function over aesthetics. Although that might seem superficial or unimportant, frumpy clothing comes at an emotional cost.

After being diagnosed with a disease, all that’s available are elastic waist pants?

“After being diagnosed with a disease, all that’s available are elastic waist pants?” she says, remembering her husband’s dilemmas. “That changes the way you feel about yourself if you’re not dressing like the way you want to, or you’re used to. The older population, 50 to 60, they don’t know what a casual Friday is. That generation, even if they’re retired, they wear a button-up shirt because that’s what they’re used to. If they can’t wear a button-up shirt, it affects their self esteem.”

Care+Wear’s armband is fashionable and keeps PICC lines secure.

In the past, what was available on the market made patients feel limited or uncomfortable, says Chaitenya Razdan, founder of Care+Wear. Chemotherapy used to mean staying in the hospital or on the couch, but advances in technology make patients more mobile today. One of the company’s customers was worried she had to quit her collegiate running career because of her PICC line. But when she showed her doctor her PICC line cover through Care+Wear, the doctor gave her the OK to keep running. Another customer was self conscious about going to prom with her PICC line, but she found a cover that matched her prom dress.

“It’s designed to be clothing first, not to feel like: Oh my gosh, I have to put on my special chemo shirt today,” Razdan explains.

Accomplished fashion designers have directed their talents toward solving for this underserved market. Izzy Camilleri has been featured in Vogue and designed for celebrities like David Bowie and Meryl Streep before she got a special commission from a journalist who uses a wheelchair. The project was eye-opening, and Camilleri began to realize how neglected an entire population had been up until that point. The designer decided to shift her focus toward making fashionable clothes for wheelchair users and launched IZ Collection. Since then, like Horton and Razdan, Camilleri has realized how psychologically important clothing can be.

It’s designed to be clothing first, not to feel like: Oh my gosh, I have to put on my special chemo shirt today.

“This woman called me after receiving her skirt,” Camilleri says. “She just wanted to tell me …  she’s worn it every day since she’s gotten it. It made her feel human again. That’s huge. I have other people tell me it’s changed how they feel. They’re starting to care more about how they dress. It makes them feel alive.”

Sadly, a worthy mission and passionate customers aren’t always enough to keep a business afloat. Camilleri recently announced that she’s putting IZ Collection on an indefinite hiatus to regroup and figure out her market. She’s had trouble balancing overhead with the number of customers in her market. Occupational therapists have told her that their patients are slower to try new clothing. It’s also difficult for customers to buy an item online when they have very particular fitting needs and can’t try the clothing on in person. “It’s hard maintaining overhead and stock and everything when things grow slowly,” she says.

The IZ Collection by Izzy Camilleri is as stylish as anything out there.

It’s also tricky to market to customers not necessarily united by the same interests, but simply by the same needs. “Just because you all have a spinal cord injury doesn’t mean you all want the same thing. It’s a massive undertaking to get the brand out there because everything is scattered to the wind: [People] aren’t all looking at the same disability magazine.”

“There are a lot of people out there who need what we do,” Camilleri says. “But it’s about finding that common thread that links people together.”

Still, the needs are there, and where there is a gap, there are also business opportunities. Horton has started selling her magnetic shirts in department stores such as Kohl’s and JCPenney.  

If there’s one thing Horton has learned about the fashion industry, it’s that they are slow to change. “But once they understand some of the demographic base and once they get it, they fully embrace it. It’s been a journey just to get initiative behind it. Adaptive clothing, they see it as a niche market, like: Oh, that would help two percent of buyers. But when you take it out into the marketplace, that’s when they realize it’s a necessity.”

Customers helped some big retailers understand the market demand, Horton says. “Once it was in the marketplace, people were like, ‘My gosh, my cousin, my uncle, my niece… they need that!’ We have to change it from being a niche to a necessity.”