Sky Cubacub first realized that everyday fashion trends weren’t going to cut it at age 13. Noticing a gaping hole in the fashion industry while seeking out gender-affirming garments for years, Cubacub, now 24, came up with the idea for a custom clothing line called Rebirth Garments.
“I was dreaming about it since early high school,” said Cubacub, who identifies as a genderqueer person of color and uses the pronouns they/their/them. “The garments I wanted weren’t accessible to me.”
For those who don’t identify with a single fixed gender, gender-affirming or gender-neutralizing garments can play a huge role in outward appearance—consider binders, which are often used to flatten the chest. For young people, these articles of clothing are sometimes out of reach because of a lack of resources or accessibility, which was the case for Cubacub.
Cubacub began making custom clothing out of chain mail at 13 and still exclusively wears handmade pieces. Today, the clothing is crafted in a studio space on the ground level of their childhood home in North Center. Swaths of fabric cover the floor, which is surrounded by clothing racks displaying projects past and chain-mail garments. The designs are something out of a fever dream—bright fabrics and distracting patterns (in a good way) fulfill the overarching goal of radical visibility.
After making their own chain-mail clothing for nearly a decade, Cubacub enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for formal training in garment making but quickly found that the school’s fashion department was too restrictive for their taste.
“I went into school thinking I’d be able to make these very artistic garments or garments for anybody because it’s an art school,” Cubacub said. “I found that they were very stuck in old ideas of fashion. Very binary, very sizeist and very racist.”
After being told that a tracing of their body for a garment pattern looked like a “fat football,” Cubacub switched programs in favor of fiber and material studies, a field offering courses on textile production and fiber arts such as weaving, knitting, dyeing, printing and more.
“[The program] allowed me to do whatever I wanted,” Cubacub said. It was this switch that allowed them to start exploring visual performance as well, offering a new way to display art as clothing.
While taking a class on lingerie making, Cubacub had a moment of clarity. “I was really focused, and I was like, ‘OK, this is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life,’ ” they remembered.
Initially, Cubacub’s vision for Rebirth Garments was to serve two purposes: lingerie for queer-identifying people as well as custom clothing for people with disabilities. Soon, though, Cubacub realized that there was an overlap in demand and that the two target markets were more similar than they originally thought.
“Our bodies are typically shunned in mainstream fashion and society in general,” Cubacub said. “We’re reclaiming our bodies and making them extremely visible through bright colors and patterns and things that actually fit us rather than just putting a paper sack over you.”
Cubacub uses the term “QueerCrip”—which, according to their website, is “a politicized umbrella term that encompasses queer, gender nonconforming identities, visible and invisible disabilities [and] disorders”—to describe the brand’s target clientele.
“We work with the full range of disorders, whether people with physical disabilities or people with invisible disabilities,” said Cubacub, who said they live with anxiety and panic disorders.
But make no mistake about it: Rebirth isn’t trying to conflate a gender identity with a disability.
“It’s all about how you’re presenting yourself to the world,” said Nina Litoff, Cubacub’s lifelong friend and Rebirth’s communication strategist. “A lot of the lived experiences for these groups of people are the same.”
That lived experience, according to Cubacub, comes from having a “stareable body,” or a figure that doesn’t fit the societal norm. That’s why Rebirth’s designs are so vibrant and eclectic.
“I want people to feel like they’re their true selves rather than what society has forced them into,” Cubacub said.
To help realize this mission, Cubacub and Litoff launched a Kickstarter campaign with the lofty goal of $25,000—enough to hire help for the studio, create a fund for potential clients who can’t afford custom garments and launch their own “Radically Visible Renegade QueerCrip” fashion week in Oakland, Calif., later this week. The independent program will run at the same time as Queer Fashion Week & Conference (QFW) in the same city, an event Cubacub and Litoff planned to attend but had to forgo due to their show’s unique specifications. The duo will debut 15 new garments at their performance.
Though all of the new pieces are products of Cubacub’s imagination, when a client comes to the designer looking for a specific garment, the process is incredibly involved. It starts with an in-depth interview to discuss what the client feels the fashion industry is missing and what garments the client wishes existed in the world.
“Sky asks them what has and has not been fulfilling [their] clothing needs,” Litoff explained. ” ‘What would make clothing more accessible to you?’ “
From there, Cubacub takes detailed measurements of the client—sometimes upwards of 30 depending on the client’s specific needs—and goes to work creating patterns and bringing the design to life. The client then returns for a fitting (or two) to make sure it fits just right. Even the items found on Cubacub’s popular Etsy shop are all made to order and require detailed measurements from the client.
For such a thorough process, Cubacub’s garments on their popular Etsy shop range anywhere from $7 to $1,400, prices that may seem too high for genderqueer youth or youth with disabilities to afford on their own. A portion of the Kickstarter fund will go toward subsidizing garments for customers in need.
“I have an offer on Etsy where young people can reach out and tell me, ‘I’m a teen and I don’t have any money, but I really need this garment,'” Cubacub said. “I still look like I’m 16, so I know how hard it is to get binders or gender-affirming garments as a teenager.”
In a little under a month, Litoff and Cubacub’s Kickstarter campaign reached and exceeded its original goal of $25,000, raking in $27,884 with 445 backers. Cubacub will get started on expanding their studio and making the space more handicapped-accessible. But first, they have the fashion world to take on in Oakland.
“I’m excited to have my Kickstarter funded,” Cubacub said of the campaign’s success. “I have so many amazing queer activists, fat activists and disability activists as models for this show and that’s what radical visibility is about.”
@shelbielbostedt | sbostedt@redeyechicago.com
