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. 246 // DISABLED PEOPLE: THE VOICE OF MANY.
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