Finalist 2019

RecovaWear

RecovaWear / Don't Walk, Dance / Light Creative Pty Ltd

RecovaWear is a Melbourne designed range of modular, orthopaedic clothing that wraps around the body’s injured limbs to reduce over-extension and pain caused by dressing and undressing.

5% of Australians who undergo orthopaedic surgery experience post-operative reinjury. The rate per capita is growing, and the age at which initial problems occur is coming down.

The product has been designed to look like ordinary activewear and increases clinical compliance.

It’s one hundred percent recyclable and has fair trade, clinical and personal benefits, helping to reduce the incidence of re-injury, leading to substantial public health cost-savings.

Design Excellence

RecovaWear is an unprecedented product that supports injured people to get dressed and undressed, without over-extension.

Our values and commitments go beyond the bottom line: assuring conscientious consumers that they’re getting a fair-trade, sustainable, recyclable product, and better clinical, personal and public-health outcomes.

RecovaWear:
– is fashionable; fair-trade and recyclable;
– preserves patient independence, agency and dignity;
– looks like everyday active wear, meaning you’re more likely to wear it and wear it out;
– increases clinical compliance, minimising movement whilst making dressing easier,
– minimises re-injury.

RecovaWear continues Victoria’s legacy of world-leading innovation in bio-medicine.

Design Impact

If you've ever put on a surgical gown, you’ll know that patient clothing is badly designed, needing two good hands, or some help, to tie, whilst exposing your bum.

RecovaWear builds patient dignity, agency and participation into the recovery process.

From 2000 to 2015 the national rate of knee-reconstruction surgery increased by 43%;

  • secondary surgeries increased (4.4% to 6.8%).
  • the demographic expanded: affecting young, athletic people.
  • costs were $142Million.

The product’s good looks and ability to confine movement, (reducing re-injury,) whilst helping people dress without assistance, are unprecedented, encouraging user-adoption and clinical-compliance.

Recyclable, sustainable materials and ethical suppliers complete the picture

Design Transformation

Circular economy design and ethics are RecovaWear’s market-edge.

Inspired by the owner’s recovery from serious injury, the focus on wellbeing and participation is unprecedented.

RecovaWear has delayed time to market to complete research. Our partners share our values and make our product from sustainable, organic materials.

Testing to refine and reflect clinical and patient-driven improvements has resulted in a suite of options supporting orthopaedic patients to get back to normal.

The end-product is washable, reusable, and looks like ordinary activewear, meaning it has a longer shelf-life than purpose-purchased oversized clothes with homemade holes and the tripping hazard they pose.

Design Innovation

RecovaWear responds to a gap in the market.

If you’re seriously injured and your shoulder’s out of action, it’s difficult to dress without assistance.

(If you’re busting to go to the loo, try unzipping, one-handed in a hurry!)

Patients are expected to adapt to their clothes.

By applying design-thinking to medical clothing, RecovaWear has increased patient agency, dignity and independence from carers; and built-in unheard-of clinical benefits, restricting patient movement to confined limits, (improving compliance and preventing re-injury); allowing easy access to wound sites, in clothes that look like activewear.

Patients can sustain post-operative results, reducing pressure on the health system.

Other Key Features

RecovaWear’s partners in Victoria and overseas share our fair trade, human-centered and environmental values.

These producers aren’t the lowest cost option, and they need consistent work to be viable, reduce their overheads and sustain a sustainable approach to production.

We aim to walk-the-talk on values and see our business having an important role in promoting dignity, equity and human rights.

As good corporate citizens, with an eye on domestic production, the business needs to meet a certain threshold before Victorian manufacturing becomes viable.

The award would be valuable to putting the State’s approval on an overseas trade deal driven by fairness and positivity.

Fashion Design 2019 Finalists

Actually Existing Edits

Actually Existing

TIENOT

ANDREW WILLIAMS ® / Universal Fashion Corporation

Gorman

Gorman

TANNER + TEAGUE

TANNER + TEAGUE

Chameleon

MNDATORY

Christian Kimber

Christian Kimber