Smashing Fashion: Sky Cubacub’s Rebirth Garments Offers Garments with Gender, Size and Ability in Mind
Graphic by Angela Cheng. Image via RebirthGarments.
Defying the one-size-fits-all nature of the fashion industry, Sky Cubacub is fighting to make clothing more inclusive. Cubacub’s garments are designed “for people on the full spectrum on gender, size, and ability,” focusing “on the intersection of queerness and disability identities,” and “people who are POC and also fat/plus-sized folks.”
Sky Cubacub began their presentation with an accessibility check, the first I have ever heard during my four years on campus.
“At any time if anybody needs anything accessibility-wise, let me know. All of my lectures and performances, feel free to move around and make noise. You don’t have to sit at a table if that’s not comfortable to you. I do everything with a disability lens...so it’s whatever is best for your own bodies,” Cubacub said.
Sky, who identifies as “a Filipinx, Hapa, Queer, non-binary, disabled human from Chicago,” is “a garment maker and a performance artist,” not a fashion designer. They “don’t really like to be connected with the fashion industry.”
Image via Karli Goldenberg
Although Cubacub originally went to School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the intent to major in fashion, they found the fashion department “racist,” “super fat-phobic” and “stuck in doing fashion only in one way.” Cubacub started Rebirth Garments during their last year at SAIC, opening up an Etsy shop and writing their manifesto to “show that ideology and politics were completely engrained and couldn’t be separated from my clothing line.”
Cubacub explained that clothing for trans folks and folks with disabilities is “medical looking and not full of joy” and that “it’s showing us that clothing lines aren’t thinking about our joy, they’re just trying to cover some sort of baseline need.”
Instead of conforming to this, Cubacub’s garments are based off of the idea of radical visibility, made with bright colors and patterns that “show off the parts of ourselves that society usually shuns.”
“I’m taking that and throwing it back at people’s faces. We are people who should not be ignored and should not be passed over. People should see us as cute or beautiful or sexy and not just desexualize or overly fetishize people with disabilities or trans folks,” Cubacub said.
Image via Karli Goldenberg
When asked why they chose to be vulnerable about disabilities that are frequently stigmatized, Cubacub expressed the hope that their discussion of their identity could help people to be vulnerable as well.
“I just had to put it all out there so that people would know and see that I’m being vulnerable about things and letting people know about my experiences. I hope that it would make people feel safe enough to open up about themselves in their own lives,” Cubacub said.
Cubacub sees the QueerCrip dress reform movement as a way to uplift people through performance. The performances are inclusive and combine dancing, music and modeling with radically visible garments, sporting bright colors and bold designs that are made to consider the individual needs of whoever is wearing the garment. After participating in Cubacub’s performances, they say that models are often “completely transformed.”
Image via Karli Goldenberg
“I’ll have a person say that now after doing your shows I realized I identify as non-binary, or I just identified as queer before, but I’ve actually had disabilities my whole life and I just ignored them because I wasn’t supposed to pay attention to them. I really like how people will come out of their shells at my performances,” Cubacub said. “It’s very empowering for folks.”
For Cubacub, garment-making is part of a larger resistance against the fashion industry, even a form of activism.
“I’m trying to smash the whole fashion system, me and my friends together,” Cubacub said. “I’m trying to become a big part of change and doing activism in the way that I know how and using the skills that I am best at.”