Costume and Textiles Collection at Chicago History Museum + Sky Cubacub
Images: (Left) Collections Manager Jessica Pushor holds up a miniature display form as artist Sky Cubacub takes a photo. Photo by Ryan Edmund Thiel. (Right) Artist Sky Cubacub posing at the 2018 Chicago Archives + Artists Festival. Photo by Ireashia M. Bennett.
“I am so grateful to archivists who have been able to save those patterns from history so that I can take them and make them a lot weirder.”
ARCHIVE:
Costume & Textiles Collection at the Chicago History Museum
With more than 50,000 costumes and textiles dating from the eighteenth century to the present, the Chicago History Museum’s Costume and Textiles collection is noted both for its size and the quality of its holdings. Costume materials include work by distinguished designers such as Charles Frederick Worth, Gabrielle Beene, Pauline Trigère, Yves Saint Laurent, Hanae Mori, Halston, Gianni Versace, and Christian Lacroix. Costume holdings also represent the dressmakers, milliners, retailers, and manufacturers who made this city their home. Collection materials include clothing worn by former presidents and first ladies, sports stars, celebrities, and other luminaries, as well as by everyday Chicagoans. Together, these materials — both exceptional and commonplace — reflect the history of Chicago as an evolving urban center and document fashion history through the lens of Chicago and its people.
ARTIST:
Sky Cubacub
Sky Cubacub (They/Them/Xey/Xem/Xyr) is a non-binary xenogender and disabled Filipinx queer from Chicago, IL. They are the creator of Rebirth Garments, a line of wearables for trans, queer and disabled people of all sizes and ages, which started in summer 2014. Sky is the editor of the Radical Visibility Zine, a full color cut and paste style zine that celebrates disabled queer life, with an emphasis on joy. As a multidisciplinary artist, Sky is interested in fulfilling the needs for disabled queer life, with an emphasis on joy. Additionally they are the Access Brat and the editor of a section on ethics and inclusion called “Cancel & Gretel” at literary fashion magazine “Just Femme and Dandy”. Sky has also created a queer fashion program series with Chicago Public Library Called Radical Fit. They have had over 45 fashion performances and lectured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Utah, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Northwestern University. Rebirth Garments has been featured in Teen Vogue, Nylon, Playboy, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Vice, Wussy Mag, and the New York Times. Sky was named 2018 Chicagoan of the Year by the Chicago Tribune and is a 2019/2020 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist and a Disability Futures Fellow.
READ MORE: Rebirth Garments: Fashion for Every Body