Abhinav Mishra’s Bridal 2026 co-ed collection, Baradari, rewrites Indian wedding codes by giving grooms the emotional power of red, rust and maroon, long reserved for brides. Mirrorwork, zardozi and crystal detailing appear on sherwanis, bandhgalas and voluminous lehengas, balancing restraint and opulence while celebrating community, intimacy and the quieter, unphotographed moments of a wedding.
At an Indian wedding, red has unequivocally belonged to the bride. So much so that even today, when brides are willingly expanding the wedding palette, red stands as the bridal default.The groom, by long convention, arrives in ivory, gold or a deep navy: present, but adjacent to all that burst of emotions. And so for his Bridal 2026 co-ed collection, Baradari, designer Abhinav Mishra asks what happens when that changes.
Sure, the blues and ivories are alive and well, and so is the mirrorwork that makes Mishra’s work so distinctively him, but it’s the teeming reds and maroons that catch your eye throughout the campaign (both in menswear and in womenswear, in fact. Everyone loves themselves in a little bit of red in Baradari’s world). “Red, rust, and maroon carry so much emotion within Indian celebrations, and I felt those tones could look incredibly powerful and elegant on men as well," Mishra says. “I think men today are also becoming far more expressive and emotionally open with occasion dressing, which makes those colour conversations much more exciting now.”
The sherwanis and bandhgalas prevail over the menswear section. The embroidery is concentrated at the hem and cuffs, giving the looks a sense of restrain despite the heavy work featured on them. A rust-toned sherwani worn open over a matching kurta (its border running the same gold zardozi scrollwork) lands closest to the collection's emotional core; it is the piece that most directly mirrors what the bride and bridesmaids might be wearing across the mandap. The ivory looks, scattered through the lineup, shine with the crystal and mirror detailing added across the chest and shoulders. The navies, on the other hand, feature both silver and gold work. The more heavily embroidered amongst them stand out with a chest panel embroidered heavily in silver dori work.
On the bridalwear side, voluminous lehengas are paired with sharply cut blouses and fluid cape layers. Bridal reds surface here too, but richer, brighter even, almost like the colours you would come across in those old wedding photographs of your parents in the 80s and 90s. The craftsmanship itself leaves no ambiguity: mirror work layered with hand embroidery, crystal detailing, zardozi, dori work, and dabka, worked across chanderi, organza and georgette. It is, by any measure, a lot (and a lot in contrast to the moderation of groomswear). When you look closely into the designs, little bird motifs run throughout the collection.
But why name a bridal collection Baradari? Doesn't it, after all, mean brotherhood? The designer explains that the word carries weight in the South Asian context beyond just a sense of connection between men: there’s a sense of community at large, a circle of belonging that runs deeper than the occasion. For Mishra, the name was never about gender. "For me, Baradari was always about togetherness more than individuality," he says. "Weddings are emotional, communal experiences. It’s not centred around one isolated person, but the larger feeling of love and human connection that exists around weddings. Brotherhood in this sense felt emotional rather than literal. It represented closeness, belonging, warmth, and shared celebration.”
It won’t be wrong to say that contrasts and contradictions make up the meat of the collection. Just like he does with the name Baradari, Mishra seems to expand the limits of what his brand (and craft in general) can be. At this point, mirrorwork is his established forte. But he goes above and beyond to see what more can be done with it. “We explored newer crystal and mirror combinations, more layered textures, and a more couture driven finish, which gave the craft an entirely new feeling again.”
Same goes for the colours. Baradari’s colours, be it the bright reds and siege greens of bridalwear or the muted maroons and ivories of groomswear feel like their own character. Even if you take away the hours of embroidery that went into this collection, the colours themselves feel like they have something to say.
You also start to see Mishra exploring with power and confidence through his designs this time. Stepping out of the softer silhouettes that have grown to synonymise the brand, he lists Mongolian clothing and aristocratic dressing norms as his inspiration. "There's a certain composed uniformity to aristocratic dressing that feels incredibly powerful," he says. “I was very drawn to that restrained sense of luxury and wanted to bring it into the collection through silhouette, proportion, styling, and the overall visual language of the campaign.”
Indian weddings, in any sense, are not subtle events, and bridal fashion rarely asks them to be. But Mishra’s collection seems to work towards a more balanced take. What he is really after is the space between the big moments: the wait before the baraat arrives, the look exchanged across a crowded room, the inside jokes between friends that no photographer quite captures. "The quieter moments are often the most emotional parts of weddings," he explains. "Those are the moments that stay with you."
The man Mishra had in mind while designing the sherwanis and kurtas lives comfortably inside these pauses and contradictions. " I wasn’t designing for someone trying too hard to look grand. I imagined someone confident, emotionally expressive, and deeply connected to celebration and culture, but without needing to appear overly formal or rigid," he says. "There’s softness within the kurtas and structure within the sherwanis, so the balance became very important. I was imagining someone who feels comfortable within celebration and carries that confidence naturally."
When asked about what separates a groom dressing well from one simply dressing expensively, his answer is immediate: "A groom who is dressing well feels comfortable, confident, and emotionally present within the celebration. Nothing feels forced. Sometimes the simplest styling choices can feel far more powerful than something overly expensive or overworked. Weddings are emotional experiences at the end of the day, and I think people always remember authenticity more than surface opulence."
Baradari, then, is Abhinav Mishra’s proposition for the contemporary Indian wedding. He shifts the spotlight away from the norms and the grandness of it all; beyond the bride and the groom, he asks what weddings are for, who gets to wear their feeling and how, and what it means to dress for a celebration where, aside from the mandap, the most memorable moment might as well happen in the corridor. That the big red-letter day on the calendar might bring a new chapter not just for the two people getting hitched, but those in attendance as well.