Anyone - we repeat - anyone can injure themselves by playing sport, being in an untimely accident, or just general carelessness. That’s just a fact of life. Sometimes, these injuries are minor, like a scraped knee or a sprained ankle. But other times, we may require extensive surgery.

But what happens when your injury impacts your way of life? 

For those who are recovering from a shoulder or rotator cuff surgery, the recovery period can be weeks or months. During this stage, it’s imperative that you don’t move your shoulder. As you can imagine, this severely restricts what you can wear. 

This is exactly what happened to Penny Weber, founder of the adaptive clothing line, Recovawear. After breaking her collarbone and shoulder blade in a car accident, she was limited to wearing a hospital gown and singlet during her recovery process. The lack of fashionable and functional clothing options ultimately inspired her to create her own adaptive clothes so everyone could dress easily without the fear of reinjuring themselves. 

If you’re in this boat, you’re not alone. 

Adaptive fashion has evolved over the years to create stylish clothing for anyone who is recovering from surgery or dealing with mobility issues. Now, we’ve brought all the best styles onto one platform!

Here are our top adaptive style tips to help you avoid reinjuring yourself and recover in style. 

Wear shirts that don’t require you to raise your arm above shoulder level. 

If you’ve recently had rotator cuff surgery or a shoulder injury, it’s important to keep the joint immobilised to aid the recovery process. This means you should avoid raising your arms as much as possible. 

Recovawear’s Magna T-Shirt was designed specifically for upper limb injuries. The invisible openings and magnetic fastenings on the sides of the top will help you easily get dressed without raising an arm or moving your shoulder joint. 

You can even choose shirts that are designed with magnetic closures or zips, so you don’t have to pull tops over your head. For a more sporty style, we love Reboundwear’s Lindsey Top. It features five separate zippers down the front and under the arms so you can dress without reinjuring yourself. It also accommodates slings and other orthopedic devices. 

 Wear bras & boxer shorts that are easy to put on.

Although bras and underwear are essential clothing items, they require a lot of twisting and bending over to put them on - not a great fit if you’re trying to recover. 

For ladies, we recommend the innovative Elba London Bra. Instead of contorting your body to fasten the clasp at the back, this bra fastens quickly and easily at the front - almost like magic! 

For men, the Recovawear Boxer Shorts was created with hip and knee injuries in mind. With right and left side-openings, it’s easy to step into the boxers (with your uninjured leg) and wrap the boxers around you without affecting your other limb. 

Invest in stretchy & comfortable pants to accommodate leg braces or easily access your injury.

It’s common to visit your doctor or physio regularly after an injury to check on your healing process. If the injury is on your lower half, it can be a pain to constantly strip down to your underwear to check on your dressings or examine the injured site. 

To avoid this, we recommend investing in Recovawear’s Straight Leg Pant. Thanks to the soft and stretchy material, it can easily accommodate leg braces and orthotics. You can even comfortably pull the pant leg up to access the injury around your knee, or use the long side-opening for easier dressing. 

Avoid jostling your arm injury with no-lace shoes

We tend to move our shoulders and arms quite a bit when we’re lacing up our shoes or wearing our kicks. To keep your shoulder as still as possible, invest in shoes you can easily do up with your uninjured arm. 

We’re big fans of Billy Footwear’s innovative zipper technology, which allows you to zip up the entire shoe with just one hand. Simply pop in, zip up, and you’re good to go. 

If you prefer to stick to your own style of sneakers, we recommend investing in Hickies, the genius straps that turn any sneaker into a slip-on shoe. You won’t ever have to tie up your laces again thanks to these. 

Like we said before, injuries can happen to almost everyone. But thanks to adaptive fashion, we can now recover and recuperate in style.