Marty is known for his bespoke expertise & attention to detail inspired by ambitious themes. After heading up Monaco, Marty moved to London to reestablish the brand in the UK in 2017. Martin launched the first UK collection in 18 years, delivering the London FW showcase in 2018 & first Paris FW presentation SS2019.

Applying this ability to expand the brands creative offering, branching into costume design with custom commissions for ITV & the BBC, designing for the stars of BBC1 'Design Masters', 'Dancing on Ice' & 'Strictly', as well as, West End stars of Disney's 'Frozen' for Magic at the Musicals at the Royal Albert Hall. Cementing his recognition for expertise is in statement design, recently Marty created custom designs for the stars of the 2024 Royal Variety show for HM King Charles III, having also designed for the 2021 Royal Variety Show. With Marty's statement designs chosen by the stars for the iconic Cannes Film Festival, British Fashion Awards, Oscar nominees in 2023 & 2024 BAFTA's. This insatiable creative appetite was surely inherited from Isabell, and has enabled Marty to pursue his passion for dream worthy fairy-tale design and embed this within the House's collections.

Following the creation of the first ever bridal collection for the house with his SS2023 collection, Marty's new bridal designs featured in British Vogue 2023 & the house became the latest accredited British member of the Bridal Council of America in 2024, winning most valued bridal brand in 2025.

A ruthlessly romantic collection. Statement designs, delivered through meticulous craftsmanship & couture fabric manipulation. Designed to innovate the usual-suspects of bridal for an original interpretation. Enthralled by the beauty of the feminine form, the designs are as bold as sculptures of antiquity brought to life. Driven by daring construction and decadent hand appliquee, yet delicately kept from excess through a disciplined dedication to clean lines & geometrically precise cuts. A symphony of symmetry.

A tribute to heritage, Martin Kristensen's new collection is inspired by the structural elegance & equilibrium of funnel corsetry and Victorian-era techniques, notably Charles Worth's crinoline hooped cages. Admittedly obsessive over striking silhouettes & exquisite construction for a finish that is truly breath-taking

Martin Odin Kristensen, Creative Director.
Isabell Kristensen, Founder of Fashion House

Q. Please tell us a little about your journey to becoming a bridal fashion designer.

A. It must have begun in the womb.. I was born the very day of my mother's first independent fashion show!  A due date she was aware of when she booked her date for the show, but she never imagined I would actually arrive on time.

Unfortunately, I am rather prompt!  I grew up in awe of my mum, our parents divorced, and she was raising four of us herself, often with a hand from my nan Mormor, whom we couldn't be closer to. Mormor made her very own wedding dress, so there is perhaps a clear red thread here! 

I can remember being awake at night when I was very young, not wanting to go to mum, as it always infuriated my father. I'd go and lie amongst the dresses and furs she had on spare design rails at home that she had been working on. I slept beautifully amongst those designs, never a foul dream. It would always cause a stir in the morning when no one knew where I'd gone.

There is a reason I did not simply take the couch, I was drawn to them. Fashion was like that for my mum, a means to refocus, to aspire, a way for Isabell to dream, it's what brought her to the UK and ultimately to Monaco in 1999 with her shop on the'rocher' by the royal palace.

It's a fairy tale really. Perhaps that is why I love fairy tales so much. It is the best way to focus on what we dream of, work through hard times and make a dream a mission.

Relaunching the brand in the UK was a mission for me, and that's why I sought to reimagine the brand in London in 2017, after so many years focused on the continent. To many, Monaco is a luxury retirement playground; I did not want to retire the brand. Not the place to take a brand global.

That fairy tale was good, but why must the story end? We needed the next book in the series, and we needed a global city to connect us to the world. For me it could only be London. We had awesome developments with the first UK-made collections in 17 years, and LFW launches, followed by PFW collections, and then COVID.

I began work on the Bridal collection amidst the doom and gloom of COVID. Bridal felt like a new beginning. Hope. A focus on post-pandemic life beyond lockdowns. A new mission.  Ultimately, the dedicated Bridal line was important to me because I am enamoured with truelove.

There is little better to design for. Bridal designs must draw on that feeling, very much like method acting, it is the same for Design, when I design, I draw on the purest form of that feeling, first remembered from when I was 13 and fell in love for the first time, she & I are still together.

It is that same love which brought to life new love that I am fortunate to see every time I look in my daughter Wilhelmina's eyes.  That interminable, everlasting, evolving love is what I want radiating from the bride and beaming back from the groom.

Such that they can see their whole lives together in an instant, cannot wait to start, and the wedding is that first confirmatory step! 

That is my vision, to harness & develop that feeling through needle & thread into designs that share and inspire that feeling in our brides as they wear their dress & grooms when they lay eyes on her.

A wedding is a new beginning, just like our bridal line and I am just getting started!

 Q. Are there any particular designers or eras that influence your style? 

Designers. Undeniably Charles Frederick Worth, Norman Hartnell & Roberto Capucci. Each masters of structure & innovation with a remarkable ability to translate beauty wherever they saw it into exquisite couture designs.

Worth's mastery of hooped crinoline skirts was pivotal, within the House of Worth, his son Jean-Philippe also produced stunning works inspired by the wrought iron balconies of Paris.

I generally adore the Art Nouveau movement!  Likewise, Capucci's 'Colonna silhouette'drew inspiration from the inherent beauty of a Doric column, whilst Hartnell's'1938 White wardrobe' drew inspiration from art and arguably some of Worth's work! In more recent eras, forever a child of the 90s, I'll never quite be able to shake that era of Cool Brittania! Music, art, cinema, you name it, the world wanted what the resurgence in British creativity was producing, possibly more true in Fashion than any other sector, as it was even fed heavily into the Britpop movement.  It was the era of greats like McQueen and in a way re-birth of brands like Vivienne westwood who reinvented the brand in the 90s. Think 'Anglomania collection'.

Q. We love thatyou have adopted a purpose-led approach to your collection, how important issustainability in the wedding industry to you? 

Very important. A wedding is a focus towards the future, we must focus on the future for the planet as well as for our brides, lest their children grow up in a world less safe and healthy. 

Fortunately, the same problems as fast-fashion do not plague us, stuffing out land-fill or releasing 100,000 microplastic fibres with each turn in a washing machine.

Couture is the slowest form of fashion, but our sector is not without its problems, formaldehyde being used to treat tulle to make it wrinkle and flare-resistant, for example.

Luxury should be oriented around things that require a craft, personalisation and that last, rather than the wealth to automate, standardise, waste, and buy again.  The greatest challenge is the quality of luxury materials available within high fashion.

Sustainable alternatives are improving but limited. Whilst recycling waste is one avenue, creating beauty from recycled plastic bottles is understandably less appealing to some brides, and such materials cannot be recycled again so not all ‘green solutions’ are green for long. Other waste is more appealing, like a mill I am speaking to in Italy using orange peel!  I find sourcing from new responsible renewable suppliers helps motivate the industry more.

FSC options like modal and lyocell have vastly improved in quality in the past 5years. It is exciting to see how these cellulosic fibres (MMCFs), all derived from natural sources like wood, can be both renewable and increasingly beautiful down to the very warp & weft of the fabric. Recycled yarns & fibres still have a place and can be invaluable to structural portions of the construction, boning, petticoats, etc Seaqual is a great example of Marine waste put to good use.

Q. Do you have a favourite piece or style from your collection for Isabell Kristensen? 

I love 100% of our collections, dear, but... If I am being brutally honest, there is admitedly a slight 80/20bias here. I can very rarely ever fully be unleashed as I'd likely be able to drain coffers of HMRC in a month with all the boned structures, hand-sewing and fabric manipulation techniques our team labour through in overtime! 

I can't help loving the pieces that were hardest to make the most, I love the process, love the craft.. almost more than the finished article as I am usually too distracted by that point thinking of the next design to start! 

It is typically only 20% of any given collection that features one's most arduous work; it is this minority of designs where I feel freer, with fewer constraints and limitations.

That said I do love my teacups!  Whilst complex, there is a harmonious simplicity to their construction that is endearingly alluring. Somehow, the more wow pieces can sometimes be intimidating to a portion of clients, but brides approach my teacups like they would their best friend!  

Q. Bravo on your amazing showing at BBFW. As the new Creative Director for Isabell Kristensen Couture, how do you see the brand evolving in future?

It was a huge honour to be invited to participate as a relatively nascent bridal brand, showcasing at FW alongside greats like Vivienne Westwood, The Atelier by Jimmy Choo, etc, but I have so much to do!  It is still early days for our dedicated Bridal line, the very first collection I launched being SS2023, so I am constantly anxiously anticipating how they will be received!  Fortunately, two of the first collection designs were spotted and featured in the British Vogue 23 July issue, which I took as a sign from the fashion gods not to let nerves win and crack on! 

The sense of mission has never been stronger. Bringing brides' real-life fairy tales to life is the objective, and evolving a boutique brand into the legacy my family and the House deserves remains my mission. Bridal is the first step in that expansion towards luxury RTW ranges with special order capabilities, the world over. Bridal, as an industry, is well set up to receive a couture brand operating on this basis, but our fashion RTW expansion will follow. Watch this space.