HTSI: What’s behind the fever for first-aid chic?

A physician asks why fashion has gone mad for the medical look

In spring 2020, I answered a call from the government asking for doctors not currently working in the NHS to rejoin the workforce. I put my work as a freelance journalist on hold and returned to a career I thought I had given up three years before – as a hospital physician. In doing so, I traded a work-from-home outfit of cashmere jumpers paired with tracksuit bottoms for a uniform of blue surgical scrubs, plastic aprons, N95 face masks and disposable gloves.  I was not alone. The Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie has balanced working as a GP with a career as an indie heartthrob acting in critically acclaimed films like The Worst Person in the World and Oslo, August 31st. He also returned to the frontlines in 2020 to work as a public health official. Just as wearing costumes helped him understand the characters he was playing, he found donning scrubs similarly transformative. “It definitely helped me get back into the mindset of a physician,” he says. “It’s interesting, because I think the biggest effect of the doctor’s appearance is on the patient. A professional look will boost the placebo effect of any treatment.”  Such is the power of scrubs, the genderless two-piece outfit consisting of a short-sleeve V-necked shirt and drawstring trousers. It’s a visual shorthand for safety and wellbeing.  The uniform of healthcare workers is also a subject of fascination in fashion. At a photocall at the Cannes Film Festival this spring, the actor Hunter Schafer recalled a midcentury nurse in a white apron dress (based on the Prada AW10 collection) accessorised with a white headscarf. For two seasons running, Stefan Cooke has been reworking an ’80s-era red latex Swedish medical coat – first in red-and-white checked wool for its AW23 show, then a shortened version in grey houndstooth wool with storm flap and belt for SS24. “When we cut the garment and toiled it, we found it had this almost couture element to it,” says Cooke’s partner in life and business, Jake Burt. Even Crocs, so beloved by surgical staff, have had a makeover On the accessories front, Khaite and The Row have produced delectable variations of doctors’ bags. And even Crocs – the chunky clogs beloved by surgical staff – have received a high-fashion makeover, with Simone Rocha recently joining Christopher Kane and Balenciaga in providing her own bedazzled take on the footwear. (Disclaimer: though I hated wearing Crocs while performing operations, many colleagues loved them for their comfort, functionality and hygienic properties.) Simone Rocha’s bedazzled take on surgeon’s-favourite Crocs Designs for British nurses by Pierre Cardin in 1970 © Getty Images Some of the earliest-known medical uniforms can be traced to medieval times. Early nursing attire was based on nuns’ habits until Florence Nightingale established the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in 1860. She stripped the nurses’ uniform of its religious connotations and quickly established a new rule: “no crinolines, polonaises, hair-pads etc are to be worn”, as they were a hindrance to easy movement. Meanwhile, physicians wore dark, heavy “blood and pus soaked” frock coats until the latter half of the 19th century when white coats, sterile gloves, gowns and masks were introduced thanks to a greater emphasis on hygiene and sanitation. By the 1960s, scrubs – a reference to surgical attire worn in a “scrubbed” (sterile) environment – became a staple uniform. Fashion designers have long been seduced by the medical professions. In 1970, Pierre Cardin revealed a space-age take on nurses’ uniforms with pastel-coloured outfits and body stockings with matching skullcaps. In Louis Vuitton’s SS08 show, Marc Jacobs sent supermodels out dressed as nurses, complete with lace face masks and peaked caps (a tribute to Richard Prince’s Nurse paintings). In contrast to the domination of military styles on the runways, the appeal of the healthcare uniform is arguably less ceremonial and more modest – rooted in an association with a profession devoted to caring for others. At the same time, its hardwearing practicality provides a virtual blank canvas for designers to interpret. The author in his protective gear “I often revisit medical uniforms in my work,” says Craig Green. The designer’s mother was a nurse and his SS19 collection explored the idea of angels on earth via a nurse’s uniform. “The similarities in construction and shape between uniforms and religious wear – one designed for physical function and the other spiritual function – have always fascinated me.”  Few, though, have played with the uniform like Miuccia Prada. For her Prada AW23 collection, she transformed nurse’s whites into longline shirt dresses complete with short trains and second-world-war-era capes. For her AW24 Miu Miu show she cast a retired doctor, Dr Qin Huilan, aged 70, to walk down the catwalk. Prior to hanging up her white coat in 2009, Dr Huilan had been an internal medicine consultant in China.  “Because I was busy in the hospital most of the time, I didn’t pay attention to fashion,” says Huilan, who now lives in Shanghai. This changed when she retired. In 2022, she joined Instagram and started posting images of herself in her favourite looks from Prada and Miu Miu. Having caught Mrs Prada’s eye, she made her debut in the AW24 Miu Miu show and has since accrued more than 50,000 Instagram followers. “It’s been like a dream,” she says of the experience. She loved the plain cotton shirt dresses that recalled nurse’s uniforms at Miu Miu. “There was something so intimate in that – it was something I could not wait to wear.” It brought to mind a quote that Miuccia Prada gave to System magazine in 2016: “Doctors are considered very sexy.”