These Wichitans were about to give up. Then they were invited to New York Fashion Week

If New York Fashion Week organizers call you in Wichita just a few weeks after you and your collaborator have decided to take a break from your creative venture, you likely will reconsider that decision and get back to work.

That’s exactly what Christopher Gulick, who’s known internationally for creating kinetic mobile sculptures, and Alicia Ybarra, owner of the custom dress design studio Vanya Designs, did back in late October.

About a month after the Wichita artists debuted their Wearable Sculpture line of clothing and accessories as part of the Fashion Avant charity fashion show in Wichita, organizers from the hiTechMODA fashion show in New York called Gulick, asking the pair to participate in one of its shows in February.

Gulick and Ybarra, who had been collaborating for about a year, were planning to step back from the Wearable Sculpture venture to concentrate on their individual artistic endeavors.

The phone call from New York changed those plans.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Ybarra, who has also been developing a bridal line collection for Vanya Designs. “When New York Fashion Week sees your stuff and thinks it’s good enough, you gotta go.”

Now, the pair’s collection will hit the runway as part of hiTechMODA’s red carpet and haute couture fashion show the evening of Saturday, Feb. 8. The haute couture show is hiTechMODA’s fourth and final show taking place in the National Geographic Encounter center near Times Square.

They will have 15 pieces in the show — some that had their debut at the Fashion Avant show in September and some that the pair created exclusively for the New York show. Four black-and-white tunic sets with asymmetrical elements were created to showcase Gulick’s jewelry pieces.

Local hairstylist Trish Dool is also accompanying the pair. Wichita television celebrity Sierra Scott will model the final piece of the pair’s runway collection in New York.

A relative newcomer to Fashion Week, hiTechMODA showcases emerging designers who have what it calls a new thinking on fashion.

The company’s September 2019 show featured another Wichita designer, Hazel Stabler and her Native American-inspired couture line. When Stabler was accepted, retired Wichita fashion reporter Bonnie Bing said it was very unusual and unheard of for a Kansas designer to be featured at New York Fashion Week.

An artistic meeting

Gulick has been a fixture in Wichita’s art scene since the late 1980s. He was part of the Famous Dead Artists collective that helped create the city’s now popular monthly art crawls and his work has been exhibited in New York City, Berlin and Sydney, Australia.

Always interested in lines and shapes, a few years ago Gulick started watching “Project Runway,” a reality competition TV show among fashion designers, and doodling in his wife’s fashion magazines, outfitting the models on the pages with sketches of his ideas.

“I spent a lot of that time trying to find someone in town who was qualified, a custom gown designer, a couturier because I can’t sew my way out a paper bag,” Gulick said.

Ybarra got hooked on fashion when she learned to sew at age 7 and won a 4-H award. In 2005, two years after graduating from Kansas State University with a master’s in apparel and textiles, she started a sewing business in the basement of her home. After having a storefront in Derby for several years, she relocated to the Commerce Arts District in Wichita in 2017 and started holding a fashion show to benefit nonprofits that provide services to women.

Gulick and Ybarra met purely by chance at the July 2018 estate sale of Letizia Fuhr, an Italian fashion designer who had for decades run the accredited Art of Dress Design school on South Hillside.

“We both ended up finding ourselves there in a hallway there,” Ybarra said. “I commented on some sketches he had (picked up) and we started talking. He told me he was working on a wearable sculpture project. I said, ‘I’m intrigued, let’s do coffee, I’m a fashion designer.’ … We went to coffee, he showed me his ideas and I said, ‘yes, I can build that.’

“From a fashion design background, I saw these illustrations and I thought to myself that if ever I have a chance of getting to Fashion Week, this is it. If we could execute this in the manner that I believed we could, I felt this is it something that has the interest that could get us there.”

Ybarra said the challenge was how to make three-dimensional products from the ideas that Gulick had sketched on the magazine pages. Several pieces included distinctive geometric shapes and designs. Some had layered features; for example, one jacket has orb-like fabric creations attached to it.

She found it fascinating to “turn that into something that can be translated into a garment and then worn on the human body.”

Showcasing Wichita

Ybarra has never attended a New York Fashion Week show, much less participated in one, but she’s excited to be representing Wichita. She has in the past taken some of her bridal line to the Omaha Fashion Week, and in March, she will have a booth at the National Bridal Market in Chicago.

“It’s important to get Wichita on the map and for it to be recognized as more than the Air Capital of the World but as a vibrant community with other viable industries, including fashion,” she said.

Gulick agreed. “Our efforts are to show others that you can work out of Wichita and be a creative.”

Apparently, hiTechMODA officials think that’s an interesting thing, according to a recent Facebook post by Ybarra.

“I just got off the phone with Catherine Schuller, creative director of hiTechModa. Her words: “We LOVE your story-a designer and a sculpture artist-in KANSAS! Your art is amazing and we can’t wait to show it on our runway.”

The pair are counting on Wichitans to help get them there. Because the invitation to participate was unexpected, they didn’t have a budget for such a venture. They have a fundraising campaign, ICT Goes to NYC Fashion Week, to get sponsors. In return for their donations, sponsors will receive in-kind commissioned work by Ybarra and Gulick.

According to the hiTechMODA website, it’s the first New York Fashion Week show to sell multiple designers’ collections live off the runway.

Gulick is hoping that “we’re going to come back from New York with an empty van and a handful of licensing forms.”

“Or cash would be fine,” Ybarra added.

For some designers, getting noticed by New York Fashion Week organizers can lead to showing collections at fashion weeks in London, Paris or Milan, which the pair would also welcome.

“The sky’s the limit,” she said. “I would love to see Lady Gaga or another celebrity somewhere wearing this.”

This story was originally published February 2, 2020 at 8:00 AM.