Hospital Chic

Fashion designer Cynthia Rowley has created a chic clothing line that could permanently shelve the fashion faux pas that is the hospital gown. On Tuesday, Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey unveiled the patient wear that features zippers, drawstrings and buttons in place of the traditional rear-end airy slit. There also is a selection of colors: red, white, blue, black and pink. Colleen Gruber, above, models a maternity gown with a tie-front scoop neck as she holds dolls dressed in new infant gowns and caps. “I have always believed,” Rowley says, “that what people wear on the outside affects the way they feel about themselves on the inside.”