Sky Cubacub

Shades of Noir, UK.

Interview by Florence Low.

You can check out Rebirth Garments here: rebirthgarments.com/

Follow Sky on their Instagram: www.instagram.com/rebirthgarments/

They are also fundraising for the gender-affirming surgery and education of a trans teenager, which you can support here: www.gofundme.com/transgender-teen-in-crisis

Shades of Noir spoke to Sky Cubacub, a non-binary queer and disabled Filipinx designer and founder of Rebirth Garments, which creatives gender-affirming garments for queer disabled people, about radical visibility, accessibility and the intersections of queerness and disability.

We would like to to thank Sky for taking the time to speak with us.

Please can you tell your origin story? How did Rebirth Garments come about?

I started Rebirth Garments in 2014. I had been dreaming about a collection like this since I was in high school when I really wanted to have gender-affirming undergarments, whilst I was figuring out my identity it wasn’t accessible to me being under 18 without a credit card.

I wanted to make gender-affirming clothes more accessible to different folks in different circumstances, so I do sliding scales for folks in need for example. I also wanted to make clothing for folks with disabilities, so when I was thinking about starting the clothing line I was thinking about doing them as separate ideas, one clothing line for queer people, one clothing line for disabled people. But then I figured that other people probably had intersectional identities like me, so I chose to create a line for people in that intersection.

Do you have influences in designing the garments and the performance in the runways?

I interview all my models and that gives me all the inspiration for what types of garments that I want to see in the world. More generally, I’m inspired by American architect Buckminster Fuller – renowned 20th-century inventor and visionary dedicating his life to making the world work for all of humanity, Fuller operated as a practical philosopher who demonstrated his ideas as inventions that he called ‘artefacts’ – and ‘Club Kid’ Leigh Bowery – also known as ‘Dada Kids’, they created a hedonistic community for the gay, transgender and disenfranchised to be authentically celebrated, fuelling pioneering party scene.

My dance runways aren’t choreographed, they are improvised. I give the models a prompt, I give them 30 seconds or a minute just to do whatever they want and they go wild with it. The chain-maille [the interlocking chainmail that Sky creates as headpieces] was my first main medium; it was more about getting obsessed with the process itself, it’s a really nice repetitive meditative process, I would make a lot of one weave and play with it, draping it on myself or on a mannequin.

What does radical visibility mean to you? Is it possible to have control over visibility?

I don’t think people always have control over visibility which is why I’m interested in it and it’s not always safe for people to be radically visible. I would really like to promote people in places they do feel safe to be radically visible.

Does your Filipinx identity also play into ideas around radical visibility?

Yes. I was very ashamed of being Filipino when I was a kid, and I felt very alienated by my Filipino family because I was different and an artist and queer. But then, creating this visibility around being Filipino has been very important.

I’ve been connected to a lot of Filipinx people, South Asian people in general who have voiced the same thing. South Asian folks, in general, have very little visibility, and black and brown folks too, so I have shows that are only Filipinx people or only black and brown people.

I’ve also made things that are affirming to folks of different religions, for example, more modest clothes for Muslim folks or my Hasidic cousin. I like skimpy and naked things, but as long as an outfit feels good to you it doesn’t have to be skimpy to be sexy.

Is finding and creating those spaces important to you in your work?

I’m always trying to create those spaces, always trying to make a space where people’s access needs are being met. Sometimes places will be like, ‘oh this is accessible or we can work on your access needs’, but when you try to ask them for access needs they will huff and puff. That’s a very hostile way of creating accessibility. I try to not promote spaces that do that. It also means respecting people’s pronouns or the names that they want to be called by, not being racist or sexist.

It means actively celebrating everybody.

There’s a lot of problems with accessibility in the queer scene in Chicago – people have house shows which are not accessible, and developers don’t make housing accessible, and they get around it by saying the buildings are historical.

I don’t really feel like the queer community, on the whole, is very concerned with accessibility, but things like ‘Dyke March’ are really concerned about accessibility, in contrast with something like ‘Pride Parade’ for example.

There are some clubs that are accessible that I go to pretty often, but there are also clubs that could be but chose to not let people use elevators. I only do shows in accessible places.

What difference does it make to the people who have tried your garments?

Almost everybody who has worn my things have commented that it’s so much more comfortable, I didn’t know I could not be in pain from my clothes. When I first started out, a lot of folks said they never thought anyone would care about how they felt in their clothes.

People like that I have so many clothes options.

Someone told me recently that I knew how to dress them well, but I just look at pictures of my models on Facebook, look at how they dress and create a radical visibility version of that. One of my models recently bought all the clothes that they modelled, telling me they had never had clothing like that.

Have the narratives around queerness and disability shifted since you started working in this field?

Yes definitely.

When I first started, I would tell people, I’m starting this clothing line for the intersection between queerness and disability, but people would just get really angry at me, tell me that queerness isn’t a disability. I wasn’t saying that, but they couldn’t even hear it.

A lot of them didn’t even know that disabled folk could have a sexuality, would get confused when I would tell them about queers with disability. They would think they didn’t exist. But it’s better now, there are people like [Black trans disabled model] Aaron Philip, there are a bunch more folks that are more visible.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

I love working but I don’t know that if I knew how much work it would be that I would have started the clothing line. But for my younger self, I guess I would tell them that teachers and other adults don’t actually know everything, you don’t have to follow what they say, it’s just their opinion.

I would have arguments with teachers all the time, then I would feel guilty, but then I would know I was right, that they were being fatphobic or racist. But just because they are in a position of power, doesn’t mean they are all-knowing. So yeah, be confident about that.