Our Family Helping Your Family: Easy Fashion
Adaptive Clothing
Margaret Patricia Eaton
Have mobility issues made getting
dressed and undressed in conventional
clothing, even with help, next to
impossible for you or a family
member? Has wearing a johnny-
shirt robbed someone you love
of their dignity?
in Canada, are easy for caregivers to
put on and take off, reducing strain,
discomfort and anxiety. They’re high
Easy Fashion Adaptive Clothing,
a family-owned business in
Riverview, has offered solutions
since 2016. As the only retail
outlet of adaptive fashion in
Atlantic Canada, it maintains
an inventory of between 1,200
to 1,500 women’s and men’s
clothing items — dresses, tops,
pants, undergarments, socks,
slippers, one-piece day wear and
sleepwear in multiple sizes.
The clothes, sourced from two
Montreal suppliers, are made
Working for
the Community
Au service de
la collectivité
R. Bruce Fitch
MLA for Riverview/
député de Riverview
567, ch. Coverdale Rd.,
Riverview, NB
506 869.6117
12
PrimeTime SUMMER/ÉTÉ 2019
place, both had business experience
from previous careers and that
combined with Cindy’s knowledge
of the needs of nursing home
residents and caregivers was a
recipe
for success.
“Adaptive clothing makes
it easy for staff to dress and
undress someone who’s had a
stroke, can’t stand or has an arm
that’s contracted,” Cindy says,
explaining how caregivers may
have to dress as many as nine
residents for morning care. “The
clothing is open back, but it’s a
double crossover and there’s no
part of the back exposed.”
Our family helping your family: With Beverly
Leger as a model, Cindy Brown demonstrates
how easy it is to dress someone in a
wheelchair with a contracted arm, while Judy
Duffy holds two other adaptive clothing
choices. PHOTO: MARGARET PATRICIA EATON
quality and well made, affordable,
durable, comfortable and fashionable.
Plus, they’re accessible to residents
of up to 50 nursing homes in New
Brunswick and PEI, because Easy
Fashion comes to them, every spring
and autumn, in a 17-foot cube van,
which holds nine racks of clothing
that are rolled out and set up for a
shopping day.
The service is the brainchild of Cindy
Brown, who worked at the Kenneth
E. Spencer Memorial Home for 28
years, where she says, “There was a
woman who used to come with clothes,
then she retired, and no one was doing
it. I was retiring and saw this as an
opportunity, so I talked to my sisters
and they agreed we could make
this happen. “
Cindy’s sisters, Judy Duffy and
Beverly Leger, who volunteered the
use of her basement as a start-up
From the front the item looks
like conventional and fashionable
clothing. “Some men, for
example, once wore business attire
and their wives like to dress them to
reflect that,” she says, displaying a
back-opening top designed to fool
the eye into thinking it’s a v-neck
sweater over a buttoned shirt
with a collar.
Easy Fashion also includes one-piece
outfits specifically designed to deal,
in a dignified manner, with certain
behaviors of Alzheimer’s patients,
and a line of conventional, but
uncomplicated, clothing for residents
who dress themselves.
Says Judy, “This is a service that’s
needed and will only get bigger as baby
boomers live longer. Our long-term
goal is to have the clothes made here
in Atlantic Canada, but first we have to
find good seamstresses. Another goal
is to provide an online shopping service
– but small steps at a time.”
Adds Beverly, “I made up my mind a
long time ago if I’m not having fun I’m
not going to work, but we enjoy the
seniors and seeing them in clothes that
make them feel good about
themselves is fun.”