Architexture creates wearable art for KC

John and Christina Moncke have been married almost 17 years, and they successfully work together— you might say seamlessly.

Architexture is the womenswear line they’ve created to bring what they call wearable art to Kansas City. John McGrath, a videographer and producer for KCPT’s “Arts Upload,” recently sat down with the husband and wife duo to learn more about their work.

Architexture’s clothes are best described as minimalist and modern. John and Christina have been invited to show their work at Kansas City Fashion Week for the last three years. This year, Architexture was chosen to open the Friday night fashion show.

Christina describes Architexture’s clothing as “commercially viable wearable art.”

“You hear ‘wearable art,’ and you think some outrageous things,” she said. “But, this would be art that someone would actually want to wear and be seen in and be recognized for it.”

Christina hand drafts the patterns for Architexture’s clothes. But, there’s more to running a fashion line than just designing clothes, John said.

“The next chapter is putting as much effort into the business as we have into the design,” he said.

Both Christina and John have backgrounds in the fashion industry. Christina is a college instructor at the Art Institutes International in Kansas City. She teaches fashion design and fashion marketing. John works for Sporting KC, designing much of the team’s merchandise. He’s worked on everything from the players’ uniforms to the scarves worn by fans.

He said sports merchandise is a huge business.

“We’re selling as much as a typical mall store might do in a month, we’re doing in three hours,” he said. “So we want to make sure everything is set right, everything is as efficient as possible.”

Christina said their relationship influences their business in a positive way.

“Sometimes we can just say a simple idea, and either one of us can just go with that and probably come up with something similar to the other one’s idea, too,” she said.