Fashion for women health-care workers

By the time Kayla Curtis becomes a doctor, she’ll be running at least two businesses.

The fourth-year University of Manitoba medical student is the founder of WPG Local Cleaners Inc., a cleaning business she started in 2024 to fund her education. Today Curtis is launching MediLuxe Scrubs Ltd., a brand that offers functional and fashionable scrubs for women health-care workers.

“I’ve always loved fashion and creativity, and after spending the last several years in medicine, those two parts of my life naturally started to come together,” Curtis said.

What you wear doesn’t make you a better clinician, the 28-year-old Winnipegger added, but function, professionalism and personal expression don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

“I simply wanted to create another option for people who enjoy a more structured and fashion-informed approach to workwear outside of the operating room, where traditional scrubs are required,” she said.

MediLuxe’s first collection includes two styles: “the tailored” is sleeveless and includes lapels, while “the wrap” has short sleeves and a small collar. The scrubs are available in three colours — venous teal, circadian black and basal grey — and sizes range from extra small to extra large.

“Women should be able to take pride in how they present themselves without that being interpreted as taking away from how seriously they take their profession,” Curtis said.

Women’s representation in medicine has changed significantly over the years, she added, pointing to 2024 data from the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada that shows women now make up more than 60 per cent of medical students in Canada.

While creating the designs, Curtis considered the different stages women may go through during their careers. MediLuxe’s offerings include wrap-style and adjustable designs that are pregnancy and breastfeeding friendly.

“Challenging traditional scrub design isn’t just about making scrubs more fashionable,” Curtis said. “It’s about asking whether we can design health-care workwear more thoughtfully around the women who are increasingly wearing it.”

The garments are manufactured in Winnipeg through the Cutting Edge, a social enterprise program of Canadian Muslim Women’s Institute (CMWI) that trains newcomer women to become industrial sewing machine operators

The scrubs are made using a premium performance fabric sourced from China that has four-way stretch, is breathable and has integrated antimicrobial technology, Curtis said.

“MediLuxe is intentionally a premium product, and I want the quality of the fabric, construction and design details to reflect that,” she said.

Scrubs can retail for anywhere from $50 to more than $150, depending on where they’re manufactured and what materials are used, Curtis said. The retail price for a set of MediLuxe scrubs is approximately $200.

The online response has been greater than Curtis anticipated. Since she announced the brand three months ago, MediLuxe has received 5 million organic Instagram views and around 2,000 people have signed up for the company’s email list.

Curtis has also fielded inquiries from around the globe. MediLuxe only ships to Canada and the U.S. right now, but she’s working on making worldwide shipping available soon.

“It’s definitely very exciting,” Curtis said. “It’s surpassed any expectation that I had previously about how our brand announcement and first launch would go, but I don’t want to make any assumptions about how this will translate into sales.”

She invested around $100,000 to start the company. Workers at the Cutting Edge are half-finished MediLuxe’s first order of 500 sets of scrubs.

Working with MediLuxe is a fun challenge for the Cutting Edge, said Maria Rabadi, senior manager at CMWI. The social enterprise has collaborated closely with Curtis throughout the design, prototyping and manufacturing processes.

“She’s such an active, vibrant person,” Rabadi said. “We get motivated every time she comes to visit to do even better because she’s very passionate about her product.”

Over the last eight years, the Cutting Edge has trained more than 200 newcomer women who have secured employment in Winnipeg’s garment industry, she added.

“We like challenges,” Rabadi said. “We’re not just a social enterprise and we’re not just focused on impact — we’re focused on quality.”

According to Curtis, this is only the beginning for MediLuxe. She wants to learn from the company’s first customers, continue improving the product, and introduce additional designs, colourways and sizes in the coming months.

Meanwhile, she’s considering a few different medical specialties as she completes her last year of medical school. She also continues to run WPG Local Cleaners — a business that completes more than 150 cleans per month, supported by two managers and around 15 cleaners.

“I don’t really view medicine and entrepreneurship as competing parts of my life,” Curtis said. “Medicine is incredibly important to me and remains my professional priority, but I also really value having interests and skills outside of medicine.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca