Photograph: Colectivo Multipolar

get your hardcopy of the zine here!

Feeling confident in one’s outward appearance can revolutionize one’s emotional and political reality, thus, Rebirth Garments and the Radical Visibility Zine works in tandem as a way to nurture a community of people who have often been excluded from mainstream fashion and provide a platform for people to confidently express pride in the intersections of their identities.

All issues of the Radical Visibility Zine are in our store! the following is the original paper that I wrote for my class with Romi Crawford in 2015, and has been my ideology for Rebirth Garments ever since!

Click here if you want to read the abridged version that is translated in Spanish by Ana Garcia!

Click here to read the Plain Language translation by Sara Luterman that is in “Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty First Century” edited by Alice Wong!! Radical Visibility starts on page 71- 78, but feel free to read them all!!

The Radical Visibility Zine shows queer and disabled teens, adults and children a possible future, which contrasts the death obsessed media that is so prevalent today. When our main representation in media is our death, it makes it extremely difficult to continue to live a life. It is because of this toxicity on the internet that I choose to have hardcopies available. I want to go back to the sanctuary and preciousness of real books you can touch and feel, where you won’t get distracted by pop up adds or scrolling through a feed, to make our futures more tangible.  

Listen to Sky read Aloud the Full Original Manifesto:

Video by Colectivo Multipolar @colectivomultipolar on Instagram [Video image description: Sky is reading a colorful manifesto zine while sitting on a couch in their sewing studio for Rebirth Garments. the couch has a colorful colorblocked geometric quilt that has designs that mimic their makeup. they are wearing their signature pink scalemaille headpiee, spikey geometric eyeliner, an assymmetrical blue sparly lip and black and white graphic glasses. they have pink lasercut queercrip symbol earrings on that are a collaboration with Alex Chen and a queercrip symbol ring from Wabisabi Opals. They are wearing a pink patterned blazer with black and white triangle lapels. the pattern features paintings by their late father Arturo Cubacub and were digitally arranged by Lindsey Whittle. they are wearing a risograph They/ them button by Bright and enameled pins featuring their logo and queercrip symbol. They have on a business queer snap button up shirt in dazzle camo and matching loincloth shorts. ] @rebirthgarments @radicalvisibilitycollective

Radical Visibility: A QUEERCRIP DRESS REFORM MOVEMENT MANIFESTO (Abridged)

By Sky Cubacub
Edited by Daviel Shy
Original version finished April 22, 2015- get the zine to read it all!

abridged and updated October 2019

“The visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength” – Audre Lorde 

Cultural norms don’t encourage trans and disabled people to dress stylishly or loudly. Society wants us to “blend in” and not draw attention to ourselves. But what if we were to resist society’s desire to render us invisible? What if, through a dress reform, we collectively refuse to assimilate?

Disabled and trans people have specific clothing needs that aren’t adequately served by mainstream designers. In Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013), disability feminist scholar Alison Kafer writes that “the inability to value queer lives is related to the inability to imagine disabled lives. Both are failures of the imagination supporting and supported by the drive toward normalcy and normalization.” 

A few designers make adapted clothing for disabled people and other designers make gender affirming clothing for trans and queer people, but the garments focus mainly on function, with almost no concern for aesthetics. And these clothing lines put the intersectionality of these two communities in the same framework. For example, binders—garments used to flatten the chest, often worn by transmasculine and nonbinary folx—have until recently been available only in black, white or “nude” (a racist beige that looks like a band-aid). These binders resemble medical devices, reflecting our culture’s long history of pathologizing gender-variant people. (It wasn’t until 2013 that the American Psychiatric Association removed Gender Identity Disorder from the pages of the DSM. The current DSM-V has replaced GID with Gender Dysphoria, which erases the fact that not all trans people are dysphoric.) However even now, with newer options becoming available, binders are still designed for pure utility and with the intention of being hidden.  

Likewise, most clothing made for disabled people caters to senior citizens, such as the brand Buck and Buck. The styling isn’t active-oriented, assuming that the wearer won’t be moving around much independently, and the garments look much like hospital gowns or scrubs. This assumes not only that clothing for disabled people and clothing for older folx are synonymous, but also that all disabled people incapable of being active through sports, swimming, dancing or generally being someone who can boogie.  Older people with disabilities and chronic pain need fun active options as well. The brands that do make items for children and teenagers simply offer shrunk-down versions of the seniors’ clothing. Even if you are sick, wearing clothing that makes you look sicker is dehumanizing.

One brand that doesn’t make you look like you are in a hospital is IZ Adaptive. They offer business and business-casual clothing for wheelchair users. They are currently one of the best options out there, but their clothes simply fulfill a need to look “respectable” or be “taken seriously” in an office job setting. There need to be options that go further—celebrating us, showing how we should be valued in society.

When I was twenty-one years old, my stomach mysteriously developed a still undiagnosed stomach disorder. I couldn’t wear what I now call “hard pants” (jeans or non stretch pants) due to pain. My inability to eat, combined with other life events, exacerbated my lifelong anxiety and panic disorder. I took a semester off from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and decided to become a new person. On May 21, 2013, I held a performance art ceremony that I dubbed a Rebirthing Ceremony. When I went back to school, I kept thinking about what clothing that I could comfortably wear. In 2011, I had made an absorbent terrycloth-backed screenprinted scarf for my cousin Sophie, who had Hereditary Sensory Neuropathy Type 2. Sophie’s mom, Jody, suggested I make a clothing line for disabled kids. Sophie was 17 at the time, so she wasn’t exactly a kid. I didn’t want to only focus on kids, though—I wanted to make clothing for everyone. I also had been dreaming of a line of gender-affirming undergarments since high school, which is when I first started exploring my gender. I wanted a binder and packing underwear, but, as a minor with no digital money, I didn’t have access to these garments.  

In the summer of 2014, I took a lingerie class at SAIC and started making prototypes for myself and my friends. I decided that, instead of having two separate clothing lines, I would create the first clothing line for disabled queer and trans folx of all sizes. I started Rebirth Garments: custom-made gender non-conforming lingerie, clothing, and accessories for people on the full spectrum of gender, size, and ability. My clothing celebrates each wearer’s complex intersections of identities, giving light to each one and providing an option for all of them simultaneously. Feeling confident in one’s  appearance can revolutionize one’s emotional and political reality.

Since my clothing line and other relevant projects emphasize accessibility, it is important for me to give free or sliding scale/pay-as-you-can options, especially since most people cannot afford to have clothes custom tailored. I could mass produce a few sizes to make the garments cheaper, but my work stems from the ideology of making things unique to the client, and my business is not fast fashion. I don’t have any sizes on my website at all—instead, clients instead send me their exact measurements. 

The majority of my customers are disabled people (with both apparent/ non-apparent disabilities), people with sensory sensitivities, transgender/ non-binary people, and fat/plus-sized people. Many of my transmasculine clients need a binder but have physical disabilities that prevent them from being able to wear the mass-produced versions. I specialize in making a “less tight bind” fit option—something my clients with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome especially prefer, since rib dislocation is a common issue. For people with sensory sensitivities, I create garments with the seams on the outside (irritating inner seams are a problem that I myself have had throughout my life). Pockets to hold gender-affirming prosthetics or insulin pumps can be added as needed. Everything is made from stretch fabrics, allowing the clothes to slip on easily, accommodate weight fluctuation, and facilitate full-range movement. In addition to serving specific functional needs, Rebirth Garments are also designed to meet the custom aesthetic needs of my clients. Rebirth lingerie can be worn as outerwear: the fun colorful patterns are meant to be visible, to make the wearer feel sexy and cute. In the face of what society tells us to hide, we are unapologetic individuals who want to celebrate and highlight our bodies. Instead of hiding the aspects of our identities that make us unique, we are Radically Visible. 

Rebirth Garments challenges mainstream beauty standards, sizeist/ableist notions, and the gender binary. Clothing is your second skin; it changes the way you hold yourself. I consider it armor because it has the power to give you the confidence and strength to feel comfortable in your first skin.

Of course, one clothing line alone cannot destroy societal oppression: we need something widely accessible so that anyone can participate. I suggest a politically forceful aesthetic style called “Radical Visibility”. Physical visibility is an important step towards political/social freedom and equality. 

In explaining my work, I have used historical examples of clothing reform as a reimagined tool for visibility today. The nineteenth-century suffragettes used dress as a political statement/tool. Their Women’s Dress Reform Movement—also known as Rational Dress—was created to subvert the prominent societal idea that women were infantile and emotional, while men were logical and rational (for more, check out Mary Wollstonecraft’s in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). To the suffragettes, the “rational” in Rational Dress Reform had two meanings: to affirm that women were just as rational and therefore just as intelligent as men (though we now know that these should not be equated, but this was their logic at the time), and to emphasize that the clothing it proposed—unlike corsets, which moved organs, and prevented bones from growing in young wearers—didn’t harm the body. But what women had worn before wasn’t in fact Emotional Dress; it was Patriarchal Dress, designed by men to make women’s bodies conform to the “ideal” shape that men desired. 

I see Rational Dress as having simultaneously provided Emotional Dress—allowing a physical freedom that also gave emotional and societal freedom. Rational Dress called for garments that had breathing space, allowed full mobility, were easier to clean, and could be opened and closed by the wearer rather than by a lady-in-waiting (which only women of wealthier classes had access to). 

We can use the same requisites for our Queer Disabled Dress Reform Movement and tweak the language to fit our needs.

Radical Visibility is a call to action: to dress in order to not be ignored, to reject “passing” and assimilation. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, who edited the anthology Nobody Passes (2006)—a collection about trans identity—wrote that she seeks “to shift conversations about passing away from the dead end of authenticity, in order to ask: if we eliminate the pressure to pass, what delicious and devastating opportunities for transformation might we create?” 

We cannot call ourselves radical if we are promoting fatphobia, so this is another key element of Rebirth Garment’s philosophy. This is especially crucial within queer and disabled communities. In the summer of 2014, at the chicago queer punk festival Fed Up Fest, activist Gus Allis gave a talk about how feminist/queer/anarchist spaces—which pride themselves as “safer spaces”—are in fact unapologetically fatphobic. Depictions of evil—capitalists, CEOs, bankers, and police—are always portrayed as fat. In “The Barf Zine,” Allis wrote:

I lived my whole life as a fat girl and never once seriously entered the world of eating disorders until the age of 21, I became an anarchist and a queer. I went to the 2009 Bash Back convergence at DePaul and the next week I purged for the first time…Being a fat woman with an eating disorder is essentially to live in an invisible world. We don’t exist. 

Society says we are not beautiful and we are definitely not sexy, so we have to make our own sexiness that is independent of heteronormative ideas of beauty. Chrysalis is a lingerie line for trans women that offers two products: a bra with built in “enhancers” and high-waisted thonged tucking underwear. The brand launched in May 2013, and is credited as being the first lingerie line for trans women by a trans woman. However, they offer very limited size options. Teagan of autostraddle.com wrote a critique of the brand only a couple days after it launched:

I asked about larger band sizes and I used my own situation as an example as a 38B. Their official Facebook responded: ‘As a brand we also have a specific look which is about looking ‘natural and proportioned’ so we figured a band size of 38 would look most balanced with a D cup and nothing smaller.’…in an effort to provide lingerie for the marginalized transgender community, Chrysalis has resorted to an attitude that does nothing to challenge traditional cisgender beauty standards. 

When I first started Rebirth Garments, none of the people at my school thought that disabled people could be sexual, let alone queer. SAIC at the time had very few physically disabled students or students who outwardly identified as disabled, due to the inaccessibility of tuition and the culture of ignoring your body and mind’s needs. At the time, all the leading Trans undergarment lines adhered to pre/post operative surgical thinking, using the terms FTM (female to male) or MTF (male to female) to describe only two possible transitions, both conforming to binary frameworks. This not only limits the trans experience to binary expectations, but also promotes unrealistic views on passing. It validates only post-operative “passing” trans individuals—a specific narrative that doesn’t embody the full spectrum of trans people. Rebirth Garments is unique in that it celebrates the nonbinary experience, making it more visible. Rebirth fosters a community that creates a space for the self-identification of gender, whatever it may be.

The following section details the aesthetic elements that I use to position Rebirth Garments as radically visible. I engage with the physical properties of dress and find a metaphorical element that speaks to me as sexy, silly or fun, pataphysical or absurdist. These elements often serve to triangulate—expanding the binary into a triangle and then using the point of the triangle to stab itself—and skewer the cultural binary (hegemonic) boring style. 

Rebirth Garments’ Current Recommended Approach to being Radically Visible:

Note on the word ‘current’: the signs of Radical Visibility will have to continually adapt. If these elements become normalized into dominant culture, they won’t be as visible; they will blend in again. We always need to adapt to be as visible as possible so as not to be ignored. I am listing these as suggestions for people to Do-It-Yourself, or for designers to join the dress reform movement! Feel free to add your own!


  1. Using fantastically bright colors! Artist/writer David Batchelor, in his book Chromophobia, describes how color has been oppressed in Western culture due to its connection with emotion: “colour is made out to be the property of some ‘foreign’ body – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or the pathological.” If color is seen as “the property” of Disabled Queers and therefore expunged, then color is interconnected with our communities. The reclamation of color is the celebration of Disabled Queers! We can take the visibility cues used in construction zones and bike safety gear and use these colors in combination with shiny spandex/lamés and glitter vinyls. Reflective fabrics promote self-reflection and critical thinking. 

  2. Exuberant geometry in the cuts of the garments and the patterns on the fabric. Triangles are encouraged to represent the effort to triangulate and subvert the binary. Geometric lines and patterns with high contrasting colors call out the idea that  “drawing is the masculine side of art, colour the feminine side.” a statement made by Bachelor critiquing Charles Blanc’s idea that “‘as sentiment is multiple, while reason is one, so colour is a mobile, vague, intangible element, while form, on the contrary, is precise, limited, palpable and constant.” The clash of color and geometry breaks these binaries. Being clear and confidant, as signaled by see through fabrics—like clear vinyl drool bibs that don’t cover up the rest of your cute clothing (think club kid wear). We are not confused, and we are not apologetic for being ourselves.

  3. Clothing cuts that highlight our bodies, rather than hiding them. Having the option to wear things that fit, instead of baggy things that cover us up. Rebirth Garments custom-makes clothes to order, so the line fits people of every size, with any type of need: holes where tubes need to be able to freely come out of the body, clothing tailored for your amputated limb so that you’re not required to wear a cosmetic prosthetic.  

  4. If you do wear or want to wear Prosthetics, wearing ones not based on realism. Think of Paralympian runner Aimee Mullins’ jellyfish and cheetah legs, or Viktoria Modesta’s geometric spike peg leg. I am interested in the idea of completely subverting this by wearing colorful sculptures in a variety of materials as packers (which create a bulge in your pants, typically worn by trans masculine folx). I wear a metamaille (chainmaille out of chainmaille) packer I made in my boxer briefs and long johns, where it can still be seen through a sheer packer pocket.  Some gender non-conforming people—I am one of them—aren’t necessarily interested in being, becoming, or “passing” as a man; I want to be my own gender that isn’t based in the binary or biology. Why can’t my gender be a shape, texture, or something else entirely? 

Radically Visible and Auditory Performances 

Instead of a typical stoic runway, I host fashion performances that feature local models of various marginalized identities, dancing in custom garments designed to serve their physical and social needs. Through dancing, the models show how the garments help them move in a way that shows off their true selves. I am adamant about the accessibility needs of both the performers and audience. At the end of the performance, we invite the audience to come dance with us, changing the landscape of what we think of as a fashion show, transforming the event from a spectacle to an academic event, club event, and lesson on radical inclusion. 

In November of 2017, I gave a combined performance, lecture, and workshop at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In gallery and university settings, I usually give verbal audio descriptions of the garments after the performance. In this case, however, my schedule was very tight, so I was only able to describe a couple of the outfits. Afterwards, a member of the audience approached me, saying that I should give the descriptions during the performance itself. I hadn’t figured out a solution that wouldn't overstimulate the audience when paired with music. Often in audio-described performances, an offstage speaker describes events as a disembodied voice. It’s rarely integrated. I began to think about other possibilities. 

Queer pop star Jake Vogds had asked me earlier that year if they could write some music based on quotes from my Radical Visibility manifesto, which is a more in-depth version of this essay that I originally wrote in April 2015. After the Whitney performance, I suggested that we write songs with audio descriptive lyrics. I always interview my models in order to create their dream accessible garment, but this time, since we would be describing the clothes while the models danced, I also asked them to tell us about their dance moves and how they wanted to be described. It was important to me that the models have autonomy in the descriptions because many audio describers tend to gender folx without confirmation, or mention skin color only if they were a person of color. 

I was asked to do a residency at the Evanston Art Center, so I thought it would be the perfect place to work on this accessible fashion performance project. I formed a collective called the Radical Visibility Collective, which was comprised of me, Vogds, and my longtime clothing collaborator Compton Q. I wanted us to design a clothing collection together where all the outfits were individually described in the songs. Vogds executive produced a 5-track multi-genre album and sang on 4 of the songs, taking quotes and inspiration from my manifesto and from the interviews I conducted with the models. the local Chicago queer song makers and singers  featured were Jeremiah Meece, Bon Bon, Kiam, EnGAYgement Party, Andy Milad, Saki NoSaki, Gabriel, Brandon Leigh, ( plus Compton Q and I also sung on a track!). 

We debuted the music at the Chicago History Museum, playing the songs during our fashion performance. At these performances the audio descriptions were fully integrated as one of the main features of the performance. This is an example of what accessible art/design should be. It is more than a checklist of bare minimum ADA requirements. It truly celebrates ACCESS.