Designing Gender-Non-Conforming Clothes That Stand Out
How Sky Cubacub launched a clothing brand for people overlooked by the mainstream fashion industry.
“My clients are queer, trans, disabled folks of all sizes, races, and ages,” says Sky Cubacub, the Chicago-based designer behind Rebirth Garments, a clothing brand for the people the fashion world ignores.
A non-binary queer and disabled Filipinx human, Cubacub, who goes by the pronoun they, started Rebirth Garments in 2014 while studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I decided that I wanted to do this clothing line that incorporated gender-affirming clothing with clothing specifically made with people’s disabilities in mind,” Cubacub says, “and I just smooshed those collections together as one.”
Cubacub designs and makes brightly colored custom garments ranging from a unisex biketard to unisex boxer briefs with an insulin pump pocket and a mono thigh-high mermaid tail that works best for wheelchair users.
There are no sizes. Cubacub tailors each piece to a client’s measurements.
And when you wear an item of clothing from Rebirth Garments, you are going to be noticed; Cubacub is a proponent of radical visibility. “It’s just refusing to assimilate, refusing to be made invisible,” Cubacub says. “It’s also very much rejecting ideas about passing and about trying to stay in any sort of binary.”
Here, Cubacub, cited in the Chicago Tribune as one of the Chicagoans of the Year in the Arts in 2018, talks to Magenta about their creative practice, delving into the hours they work, and why they don’t use tags to brand their garments.
Putting in the hours
I have a lot of deadlines to meet, but I guess I choose my own hours depending on how my body feels. So one day I might wake up early and try to get a lot of stuff done early, and then the next day I might wake up late.
For a couple of years, I would work mainly at night. I might work up until 7 a.m. But I recently got a puppy, so that’s been shifting my schedule tendencies. I basically wake up when I get so many messages and texts that I can’t ignore them, then I just start emailing in bed, and then I try to get clothed, and I start working. If I have my one employee over, then maybe I start working at 10 a.m. But I think I work better if I start at noon and then just work later. I don’t really take breaks, but sometimes I’ll have to run errands. Sometimes I do take naps if I didn’t sleep at all.
Client consultations
I’ve done everything from in-person, Skype calls, emails. It depends. I’ll ask them their favorite colors and things like that. I might pick the brighter of the colors that they like, and then I’ll try to get a feel for what they already wear. I’ll try to look at their current style and come up with things. One of my friends uses an insulin pump and might say, “Well, I want to be sexy, but then I want to also have the little place for my insulin pump,” so I’ll be like, “Cool. I’ll design something with a little pocket for an insulin pump.”
I try to make clothing as comfortable as possible. But I’m not trying to force people to feel comfortable with their bodies. My therapist was just talking to me about being like, Oh my body might really hurt right now, so it’s okay to not feel okay, or not to feel super positive about it but just be OK with it.
Building a brand without logos
I use a lot of color block in my work, so I think that the way I do it is pretty distinctive. People recognize it even if I don’t actually put any tags on my work, since I hate tags, and I think they’re really itchy. I don’t need to put logos all over things. I think my style is strong enough that people will recognize it.
No sketching for this designer
I hate sketching more than anything. I just don’t really need to sketch. If I can imagine it in my head and just make a pattern directly from it, then it skips a step. In art school in the fashion department, there would be all these people who were amazing at doing fashion illustrations, but then you’d be like, would that actually work in real life? No, because there is a thing called gravity. You would see how they would try to make it, and their designs would look terrible. You made a beautiful picture, but you don’t know how to execute it.
Sewing their own stuff
It’s just really difficult to send pieces off in my case, because I do everything custom made. But I actually am going to try and do a really small run of tucking undies with Blue Tin Production, which is a new fashion production co-op here in Chicago. I’ve never had any interest in sending them out, because bigger places, or even smaller places, will be bad, very sweat-shop-y. But Blue Tin Production is a co-op, so I like that, because it’s employee run. It’s employee owned and operated. It’s all run by refugee immigrant women and a lot of Muslim women. They’re very radical and into my clothing line.
A workspace that feels like home
My parents bought this building 10 years before I was born. It used to be a mom-and-pop grocery store, and they bought it from a Hindu ashram. So the studio space was the grocery store area and also the temple area. My parents made it into a video dance studio, and then I took over once I started the clothing line five years ago.
I love my house. I love my parents and being near them. I never wanted to leave because my parents were older parents. It ended up being a good decision for me to stay here because my dad passed away recently. I took care of him, which was only possible because I worked at home. I really love this studio. It’s covered in my dad’s paintings, and my mom’s work is also around the house. It’s very inspiring to me. Both of their work really influenced me a lot. They’re both multi-media artists and performance art people.
It’s a pretty big space. It’s the biggest studio space that I know of anybody my age at least. There’s no windows, which kind of is bad, but I guess it’s fine if people want to be more discreet.
Avoiding burnout
It’s definitely a huge issue for me. I am definitely burned out. Every time I think there will be a break, another person dies in my family. I just have to keep going. I’m trying to have some sort of regular self-care routine, but I just don’t really have time for it.
Making time to mentor others
It’s definitely super important to me because I was not taken seriously. I am still not taken seriously because of how young I look. So I really want teens and youth to feel empowered to make really serious work and also maybe start their own businesses. You don’t have to wait until you’re out of college.
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
