Mariano Moreno trained between Barcelona and Paris, between instinct and rigour. He has spent his career dismantling the assumption that bridal must be safe, legible, or universally beloved.
You have been a regular presence on the official runway calendar of Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week for several years now. How does it feel to return season after season, and what continues to inspire you to present your work on the BBFW stage?
Returning to Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week feels like coming back to a place that understands my language. It’s not just a runway it’s a dialogue with an audience that is deeply connected to bridal as both tradition and experimentation. Each season I come back because I still feel there’s something unresolved, something I haven’t said yet. BBFW gives me the space to evolve that conversation, to push further, and to present bridal not as a category, but as a form of expression.
Your career has taken you between Barcelona and Paris, working with major houses before establishing your own label. Looking back, what were the key moments that shaped your identity as an independent designer, and how has your vision evolved over time?
My time between Barcelona and Paris was fundamental. In Paris, I learned discipline, rigor, and the weight of heritage; in Barcelona, I found freedom and instinct. The turning point came when I realized that technique alone wasn’t enough I needed a point of view. Launching my own label was less about independence and more about responsibility: defining what I stand for. Over time, my vision has become sharper, more intentional. I’ve moved away from decoration toward meaning every volume, every line now has a purpose.
The silhouettes in this collection span a wide range; they go from fluid botanical columns to enormous sculptural volumes with oversized floral headpieces. Is there one woman you have in mind across all of them, or does each look speak to a different kind of bride?
There isn’t just one woman there’s one attitude. The collection speaks to women who are unafraid of presence. Some express that through restraint, others through excess. A fluid column and a sculptural volume aren’t opposites; they’re different ways of occupying space. So rather than designing for different brides, I’m designing for different facets of the same woman.
Sita Abellán closes the show in a gown shaped like a bridal bouquet, and she was part of the creative process, not just the casting. What does it mean to you to involve someone like her from the inside?
Working with Sita Abellán from within the process brought a different kind of energy. She doesn’t just wear a piece she challenges it, questions it, expands it. That final look wasn’t about closing the show; it was about making a statement that couldn’t exist without her input. When someone like Sita is involved creatively, the result becomes more honest, less controlled and that’s powerful.
The headpieces by Rafa Peinador feel completely inseparable from the garments. How do you direct a collaborator when the boundary between their work and yours needs to disappear entirely without losing sight of the end goal?
With Rafa Peinador, the process is about dissolving authorship. There’s no “his” and “mine”only the final image. I don’t direct in a traditional sense; I share an intention, a tension, a silhouette, and we build from there. The challenge is trust allowing another creative voice to merge with yours without dilution. When it works, you can’t separate the garment from the headpiece, and that’s exactly the goal.
The collection is called Groundbreaking, a word Miranda Priestly uses sarcastically about florals in the movie The Devil Wears Prada. You’ve taken that irony and flipped it into a serious proposition. What made that provocation the right starting point for this collection?
The reference to The Devil Wears Prada and Miranda Priestly was a starting irony. Florals are often dismissed as predictable, especially in bridal. I was interested in confronting that idea what happens if you take something considered obvious and push it to an extreme? “Groundbreaking” became less about novelty and more about depth. It’s not about avoiding clichés, but about transforming them until they become something else entirely.
You’ve said that a bride who doesn’t transform on her wedding day misses something essential. But transformation means something different for every woman. What does the first conversation in your atelier actually sound like? How do you find what kind of transformation the bride wants?
The first conversation is never about the dress. It’s about the woman how she sees herself, what she’s resisting, what she wants to reveal. I ask questions that have nothing to do with fashion. Transformation isn’t about becoming someone else; it’s about allowing something already there to surface. My role is to recognize it, sometimes before she does, and then translate that into form.
Is there a silhouette you haven’t explored yet, a material you’re drawn to, or a collaboration you’re still dreaming about?
There are always territories left unexplored. I’m interested in pushing lightness to an extreme garments that almost disappear, but still carry structure. I’m also drawn to unexpected materials, things that don’t belong in bridal. And in terms of collaboration, I’m always open but only when it challenges my own system. Comfort is not a place I work from.
If you had to define what Mariano Moreno stands for in today’s bridal landscape, what would you say and what still needs to be challenged?
Mariano Moreno stands for intention. For bridal that doesn’t apologize for taking space, for being conceptual, for being emotional without being sentimental. What still needs to be challenged is the idea that bridal must be safe, or universally pleasing. I believe it should be personal, even divisive. Because if a bride doesn’t feel transformed truly transformed then something essential is missing.
The artist clearly presents a consistent point of view throughout the interview: the way that bridal is not a category to be served, but a form of expression to be pushed. That the bride who arrives at his atelier isn’t someone to be decorated, but someone to be read, focusing on her desires, the parts of herself she hasn’t yet allowed to surface.
What distinguished Moreno’s position in today’s bridal landscape is not simply just his technical command or his eye for silhouette, but his insistence that a wedding gown carries the weight of meaning, not just occasion, it’s all about who the bride is and what she is willing to reveal on her special day.
