Fashion designers continue designing in the time of the COVID-19 outbreak but their creativity has found a new outlet: scrubs for health care workers. Prominent designers are getting behind sewing machines with their employees to make 20,000 scrubs a week for health care staff.

All around the country, thousands of volunteers sew masks and manufacture protective gear for health care staff at the forefront of the fight against the outbreak.

For her share, designer Aslı Filinta switched her expertise in dress and T-shirt design for sewing scrubs for doctors and nurses. Soon, fellow designers joined her while fabric producers started contributing to her work. Still a designer, Filinta does not forget to put a personal touch on scrubs: a nazar bead, a charm believed to stave off the evil eye.

Filinta was gearing up for Paris Fashion Week when the pandemic hit the fashion industry. Her orders from abroad were canceled and with no new orders, she suddenly found herself idle. As she was talking to her employees about what they could do amid the outbreak, she saw a social media post by her friend Tanem Sivar, pointing out the textile shortage in some hospitals. Sivar helped her contact Çapa Hospital in Istanbul, and Filinta and her team began sewing waterproof textiles and bodysuits.

"I also kept asking my friends how I can help in other ways. You see, I had an excess stock of fabric and had nothing else to do," Filinta told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Thursday. Filinta recently met an emergency room doctor who told her that although they had a steady supply of masks and protective suits, they needed textiles like bed coverings. A demand for scrubs followed, and Filinta now sews scrubs for the staff of Istanbul's hospitals.

"Health care workers need to replace their protective suits every four hours and they profusely sweat inside them, spoiling their scrubs," she said. Other designers and fabric manufacturers soon followed Filinta’s lead, and now factories and smaller workshops are able to produce 20,000 scrubs weekly.

Zeynep Tosun, another Istanbul-based designer, joined Filinta in her initiative and delivered the first scrubs she sewed to a hospital in Üsküdar on the Asian side of Istanbul last week. "When I heard what Aslı was doing, I called her. She told me she was already doing it for the past two weeks. I was ready to sew scrubs but I had no fabric. She supplied me at first but more people started sending fabric when they heard what we were doing via social media. I made my first shipment personally to Üsküdar State Hospital and met doctors there. It was an emotional moment as they thanked me," she said.