Two sisters undergoing cancer treatment were inspired to start Spirited Sisters, which sells stylish but practical hospital gowns.

The glimmer of hope that carried Cindy Mesaros through her medical ordeal came in whimsical pastels.

When she underwent an emergency cesarean section, narrowly saving her daughter after an umbilical cord rupture, she was wearing a patterned hospital gown she had purchased with giving birth in mind. And when things got dicey, the gown helped her get through, she said.

“It sounds vain and trivial, but I think it matters,” said Mesaros, who lives in San Francisco. “Labor is such a difficult and scary thing, anything that gives you back that sense of confidence helps.”

The purchase put her among an increasing number of patients, and a small but growing set of providers, calling for hospital wear that doesn’t sacrifice fashion for function. Patients say the chic gowns make them feel a little better at a time when any positive moment helps. In some cases they ensure modestly and discretion for specific medical conditions.

Rachel Zinny, president of dearjohnnies, which offers birthing gowns in five pastel patterns and is poised to launch a bolder, funkier line, said she founded the company after wishing she’d had on something livelier to brighten up the earliest photos of her firstborn.

“I felt like I looked like a prisoner in a one-size-fits-all gown that someone could have had a heart attack in the day before,” she said. “Having a baby is an extraordinary experience, and moms deserve to look and feel special.”

Dearjohnnies also carries matching swaddling blankets for newborns. Prices range from the $26 blankets to the $70 robes.

Zinny said she has been receiving requests for non-maternity hospital gowns and plans to expand her collection to include sizes for all women and children.

Women searching for stylish garments for hospital use can turn to Spirited Sisters, an enterprise inspired by the experiences of two sisters diagnosed with cancer within six months.

After Peg Feodoroff learned she had melanoma in 2002, and Claire Goodhue received her colon cancer diagnosis in 2003, the pair enlisted their third sister, Patty O’Brien, to achieve their longtime dream of going into business together.

“We knew what we needed because we’d both been on the cancer merry-go-round,” Feodoroff said. “We wanted to give modesty and dignity back to women at the time when they most needed it.”

The resulting Original Healing Threads collection features drawstring and breakaway pants. Oriental-inspired and wrap tops, complete with removable panels that allow for examination without complete disrobing, are equipped with deep interior pockets that hold drainage bags, pumps and monitors more discreetly — and fashionably — than did the “humiliating” fanny pack the hospital handed Goodhue.

All garments are made with a stain-resistant microfiber fabric; prices range from $40 to $90.

Three percent of profits go to the “Claire Fund” for single mothers with cancer, in memory of Goodhue, who died in 2006.

Marie Coppola, of Reading, Mass., said she is wearing Spirited Sisters while she recovers from her mastectomy because she doesn’t want visitors seeing her in a hospital-issued johnnie.

“To walk around, I’d be trying to hold the IV in one hand and keep the johnnie closed with the other,” she said. “Now friends just think I’ve gotten a new outfit. It doesn’t look like medical wear.”

Patients’ desire for more attractive attire should come as no surprise to the health care industry, said Beth Allen, manager of outpatient services for women at Northside Hospital in Atlanta.

Several surveys, including one conducted by Northside, showed women’s opinions of themselves affect the actual length of recovery from an illness or medical procedure, as well as perceptions during recovery, she said.

Allen, who runs a hospital boutique providing accessories for female cancer patients and new mothers, said details matter to women trying to regain control over lives thrown into chaos.

A fashionable gown is “not going to give your sleep back or make you a wonderful mother or make your cancer go away, but it does give you some choices back,” she said.

Northside, like most hospitals, doesn’t provide chic johnnies. Big institutions trying to supply individualized garments hit stumbling blocks, Allen said, like finding material sturdy enough to withstand repeated laundering, ordering appropriate amounts of each size and agreeing on designs for men and women.

Patients generally don’t need permission to wear their own gowns, but have to make their own laundry arrangements.

Some hospitals, though, have bought into the trend. Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey provides garments by designer Nicole Miller to all patients, “from bariatric to newborns,” said Marijane Hubbell, a registered nurse who was involved in selecting the design.

Since the program’s launch in 1999, the hospital has faced problems with material and sizing, but Hubbell said staff stuck with it.

“Sometimes you’re so sick, you’re looking for any way to keep the disease from defining you,” she said.

Dearjohnnies are available through dearjohnnies.com and locally at Bellani Maternity, 1276 Bald Hill Road in Warwick. Spirited Sisters products can be obtained through the Web site, spirited-sisters.com. They are also available in Boston at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s main floor gift shop and at the Cape Cod Hospital gift shop in Hyannis, Mass.