{"id":98213,"date":"2024-12-17T13:00:35","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=98213"},"modified":"2024-12-17T13:01:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T13:01:03","slug":"pretty-sick-fashion-medical-grazia-usa-winter-2024","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/pretty-sick-fashion-medical-grazia-usa-winter-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty Sick: Fashion\u2019s New Medical Design Fetish?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photos via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Words by Faran Krentcil<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At a recent all-day press junket, a certain 40-something actress traded her usual dainty Dior clutch for a long, thin Bottega Veneta Andiamo clutch. Woven in fine napa leather and featuring a gold clasp that resembled an old-school police whistle, the $2,950 bag was an au courant\u00a0<\/i>runway score\u2014but that\u2019s not why the TV star was toting it. \u201cIt\u2019s the perfect shape,\u201d said her stylist, an A-list fashion arbiter who swore me to anonymity, \u201cto safely hold needles for Ozempic and IVF shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bottega Veneta Andiamo Intrecciato clutch, $2,950.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u201cIT\u2019S THE PERFECT SHAPE TO SAFELY HOLD NEEDLES FOR OZEMPIC AND IVF\u00a0 <\/span>SHOTS.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Welcome to the era of medical-grade couture, where status bags are covertly built to stash semaglutide, and runway labels use hospital-grade materials to create clinically cool looks. \u201cI think it\u2019s a reaction to all this \u2018wellness\u2019 messaging,\u201d says Bridget Scanlan, the designer of KYT, a luxury handbag line made in Italy that creates pebbled leather handbags with pouches specifically for insulin shots, Ozempic syringes, and IVF vials. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with needing medication! Science saves lives. It\u2019s cool to show that off.\u201d As celebrity lifestyle platforms like Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s Goop and Kourtney Kardashian\u2019s Poosh encourage their followers to\u00a0 seek healing through prettily packaged\u2014and pretty expensive!\u2014herbal tinctures and powders, more shoppers are pushing in the opposite direction, looking to sleek-up their allegiance to modern medicine through beautiful and conspicuous design.<\/p>\n

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British nurses in uniforms by Christian Dior, 1971.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To be sure, \u201chospital chic\u201d isn\u2019t a new deal. In 2000, Miuccia Prada revamped a classic doctor\u2019s bag in shiny spazzolato leather, along with the label\u2019s chunk silver logo. The purse was so popular, it was resurrected twice by the brand. When Marc Jacobs debuted his Spring\/Summer 2008 collection for Louis Vuitton, he transposed the artist Richard Prince\u2019s Y2K-era \u201cnurse\u201d paintings (also used by Jacobs\u2019s house band, Sonic Youth, for their 2004 album Sonic Nurse<\/i>) onto his Paris runway, dressing 12 models including Naomi Campbell and Eva Herzigova in tidy red cross caps and sheer black surgical masks encrusted with beaded LV logos. And come 2020, runway brands from Collina Strada to Marine Serre and Off-White made their own face masks while Chanel and LVMH loaned their textile machines to the French government for medical supply use.<\/p>\n

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Lila Moss, and her glucose monitor, on Fendace\u2019s September 2021 catwalk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two years later, medical equipment had a new moment of fame thanks to designer Donatella Versace and creative director Kim Jones. While On their joint Fall\/Winter 2022 runway for Fendace, an opulent one-time collaboration between Fendi and Versace, the designers sent nepo-fab model Lila Moss, then 21, down their Milan catwalk in a rococo-print one-piece swimsuit with bare legs and a similar insulin device. At the 2024 CFDA Awards in New York City, photographer and model Richie Shazam, 33, posed beside designer Kim Shui on the red carpet sporting an insulin pump for Type 1 diabetes on one arm and a Brandon Blackwood purse on another. \u201cI thought about bedazzling it or painting it,\u201d said Shazam, whose frequent collaborators include Chapell Roan and Charli XCX, along with Miu Miu, Ganni, and Valentino Beauty. \u201cBut you change them out every three days, so it\u2019s not the most practical thing. Also, honestly? I think it looks cool and futuristic as-is. You do what\u2019s best for your body. That\u2019s chic as f-k.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Miu Miu\u2019s bandaged feet on their Spring\/Summer 2024 runway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u201cTO GIVE US BAND-AIDS THAT YOU CAN SHOW OFF ON THE LAST DAY OF FASHION MONTH IS SO SWEET AND KIND.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Today, the easiest way to look so chic it hurts is designer Band-Aids. Miu Miu\u2019s current resort sandals were memorably shown with neon bandages swaddling model toes and heels on the Paris runway. Stylist Lotta Volkova and her team used wholesale medical bandages cut to fit each model\u2019s feet, but you can dupe the effects with a pack of neon adhesive gauze strips from Walmart. (They\u2019re $7.50 a box\u2014perhaps to offset the $925 rubber-and-rope Miu Miu sandals they\u2019re meant to complement.) \u201cTo give us Band-Aids that you can show off on the last day of fashion month is so sweet and kind,\u201d Gigi Hadid gushed on Instagram after the show. \u201cI love it.\u201d If you\u2019d rather tend to your paper cuts and blisters with a nod to Stella McCartney, head to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where you can buy packs of bandages featuring the same Yoshitomo Nara motifs as her Spring\/Summer 2023 catwalk collection. They\u2019re $12.<\/p>\n

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(L-R): Kaia Gerber in Ferragamo at the Toronto Film Festival; A look from Ferragamo\u2019s Spring\/Summer 2025 collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Band-Aids went less literal for Spring\/Summer 2025, but you could still spot them on the catwalks\u2014and later, the red carpet. At Ferragamo, designer Maximilan Davis built \u201cgauze\u201d dresses and leggings made from the same stretchy fabric technology developed for surgical wound dressing in the 1940s. Kaia Gerber wore one of the looks to the Time 100 Gala in October; she also chose a more traditional interpretation of the trend\u2014a vintage white Herve Leger bandage dress in hospital-bleached white\u2014to the Toronto International Film Festival. It was first worn by her mother, Cindy Crawford, to the Academy Awards in 1993, eight years before the model was born. Olivier Rousteing also employed (literal) surgical dressing in his Spring\/Summer 2022 collection, inspired by his own emergency surgery after a fireplace explosion covered his body in burns. \u201cI\u2019m unstoppable,\u201d the designer told reporters backstage. \u201cThis collection is an homage to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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MM Objects marble and steel pillbox, $425.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u201cTHERE\u2019S NOTHING WRONG WITH NEEDING MEDICATION! SCIENCE SAVES LIVES. IT\u2019S COOL TO SHOW THAT OFF.\u201d<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The medical fashion riffs come as a shot of wry humor for some women with health challenges. \u201cI actually love it when you see surgical stuff being used as fashion inspiration,\u201d says Los Angeles ad exec Michelle Moran, 39, \u201cbecause that is literally my life right now.\u201d A campaign producer for Sephora and Estee Lauder, Moran was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2022, and had several surgeries to clear the disease from her body. After dealing with a complicated after-care regime of countless pills, she asked her husband\u2014a watch designer for Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors\u2014to create a pillbox that \u201cfelt like a reward for getting healthy again, instead of a punishment for being ill.\u201d He came up with a steel-and-black marble sculpture that Moran now keeps on her vanity table. The couple sells versions for $425 under the label MM Objects. \u201cPeople come over and ask who the artist is,\u201d says Moran. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018It\u2019s my immune system. She\u2019s the designer. She made it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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(L-R): A latex nurse by John Galliano at Christian Dior\u2019s 2000 couture show; Moschino\u2019s 2016 prescription pill bag by Jeremy Scott.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, like all fashion trends, the quest for clinical cool can hit the point of overdose. Witness Free People\u2019s bizarre take on the ditsy floral romper craze started by Zimmermann and Sea New York. Their June 2024 version looked so much like a hospital gown, it went viral on TikTok. \u201cI had this exact outfit when I was in the hospital giving birth,\u201d said blogger Virginia Taylor on the post. \u201cBut instead of $55, it cost me $20,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the cost of one of those Balmain surgical dressing gowns, TBH.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA\u2019<\/em>s Winter Issue<\/a> featuring cover star Natasha Lyonne<\/a>:<\/strong><\/h4>\n