Rising expertise, names to know: ‘Rebellion’ is a month-to-month characteristic highlighting an lively new vanguard of trend expertise, chosen by the Wallpaper* model group.
Crib notes
Identify: Oscar Ouyang
Model: Oscar Ouyang
Alumnus of: Central Saint Martins MA
Metropolis: London
Signature model: Technically experimental knitwear woven with tales present in anime, nature, and the Center Ages.
Design philosophy
Oscar Ouyang has discovered a quiet nook of an east London pub to talk on the cellphone, someplace between his Hoxton studio and castings for his first runway present. ‘We’ll see over 100 fashions this week,’ he says, noting how the method has opened a Pandora’s field of recent – and a few worrying – elements to operating a model. ‘It’s the primary time I’ve labored with a very established hairstylist, stylist, photographer, and casting director. You start to see how everybody comes collectively to construct a story. Every particular person brings a little bit of themselves into it, which has been superb.’
Rising up in Beijing’s Haidian district, Ouyang launched his namesake label swiftly after graduating from Central Saint Martins’ (CSM) MA knitwear course two years in the past. Already, he’s generated an air of intrigue across the model, with editors taking discover and his designs showing on rails in Dover Avenue Market seemingly in a single day. While you see his garments, nonetheless, it is clear that is by no stroke of probability. Pushing the common-or-garden knit to imaginative new realms, Ouyang’s designs are not like anything on the market. He takes satisfaction in creating his personal supplies from thread to garment, weaving influences from Studio Ghibli, medieval Italian manuscripts, and the piercing avenue pictures of Chris Killip into types which might be as technically experimental as they’re resolutely wearable.
(Picture credit score: Angus Williams)
As he prepares to make his London Vogue Week debut tomorrow (18 September 2025), becoming a member of the ranks of the Newgen cohort, Ouyang is intent on proving knitwear to be as thrilling a proposition as some other design observe. ‘While you consider knitwear, you in all probability image one thing conventional or perhaps you affiliate it with grannies,’ he says. ‘Even at luxurious manufacturers, it’s all the time within the background.’ Since his first days at CSM, nonetheless, Ouyang has been taken by the fluid potential of the craft. ‘Some a part of me is admittedly drawn to the concept that you would be able to create one thing from only a thread, and all the probabilities that include that,’ he explains. ‘There’s far much less construction than different types of design. You possibly can actually take it wherever.’
Whether or not its maker is engaged on antiquated looms or spooling yak wool sourced from Mongolia, every bit is a time-consuming labour of affection. This effort is felt within the mystic life that brims in Ouyang’s knits, the place conventional Truthful Isle jumpers are darkened into wonky shapes of monochromatic intrigue, tendrils of wool drift from chunky earth-toned weaves, and stiff military gear is reduce into youthful silhouettes that play on the eclecticism of Japanese avenue model. Whereas Ouyang is drawn to the animated worlds of Princess Mononoke or Zelda, and to designers like Jun Takahashi and Quantity (N)ine – admiring, he says, their means to refract European tradition by an East Asian design identification – his first port of name for inspiration is all the time his friendship group. ‘I positively have a look at what everybody round me wears,’ he says. ‘That’s what feels most vital to me as a designer. I wish to make issues my circle will really feel snug placing on.’
Ouyang’s S/S 2026 assortment, previewed right here on Wallpaper*, expands on this world with the added problem of telling a knitwear story for the hotter months. Ever the romantic storyteller, he has titled it ‘Don’t Shoot The Messenger’, taking the motif of service birds akin to owls, doves and eagles as a throughline. Offsetting sensible shapes with delicate prospers of glamour, its most lovely items see hen and turkey feathers (sourced from the in any other case discarded leftovers of the meat business) line mushy jersey beanies and mini shorts. Elsewhere, T-shirts are hand-crocheted from lustrously breathable silks and linens, whereas Ouyang has his enjoyable with heritage materials, spinning usually weighty Irish Donegal yarns into ultra-light jumpers and waxing featherlight Harris tweed jackets to guard in opposition to summer season downpours. Cohesive, emotional, and intelligent, the result’s a assured debut from a younger designer who is aware of precisely what he desires to create and what his group desires to put on.
‘The thought was a sort of athletic look however with a very loopy degree of expertise,’ he says of its making. ‘I wished it to really feel effortlessly luxurious.’ Whereas the gathering interprets Ouyang’s subversive design language for summer season warmth, the designer has caught to his weapons with a signature earthy palette. ‘I put on a lot khaki, it’s like black to me,’ he says. ‘So we have now a lot of that and hues with a melange tone in them, the place a plain color is textured on prime. There’s black, white, gray, sandy beige and navy blue – actually basic colors.’
(Picture credit score: Oscar Ouyang)
Beneath the transportive craft of the garments, it was vital to the designer that the gathering even be tethered to our current second. ‘We had been fascinated about these birds and the phrase ‘don’t shoot the messenger’,’ says Ouyang. ‘If the message is intercepted, it causes chaos. There may be a lot miscommunication on the earth proper now, particularly on-line. I really feel just like the hole between what we see and actual occasions is getting larger and greater.’ In observe, this grounding emerges not solely within the assortment’s moody undercurrent, but in addition in its performance. Ouyang is all the time fascinated about how his items really feel on the pores and skin. ‘As a lot as we attempt to push the boundaries of knitwear, I really feel prefer it nonetheless must be snug,’ he says ‘In case you’re getting a jumper, it nonetheless must be a protecting layer and have all of the stuff you wish to really feel from a jumper.’
That mentioned, the piece Ouyang is most desirous to unveil tomorrow is one made particularly for the runway – a dramatic metallic-gold knitted night costume, reduce with a deep V-back and tassels that skim the ground. ‘It’s very glamorous,’ he says. ‘We’ve finished a lot ready-to-wear the previous 4 seasons, in order that look has a particular place in my coronary heart proper now. We’ve not discovered the precise mannequin for it but, however I’ve been in search of them all through the casting.’
(Picture credit score: Josie Corridor)
Because the present looms nearer, the designer is readying himself to share a completely realised portrait of his model and the intrepid spirit of the group that he’s steadily rising round it. ‘With the music and the set, we’re actually attempting to deliver the Oscar boy or woman to life,’ he says. ‘It’s an opportunity to essentially push my group’s identification. I need it to be filled with power and be contemporary, however with somewhat little bit of a naiveness. It is the sensation of getting a curiosity in direction of the world: open-minded however assured.’
Of their phrases
‘Rising up in Beijing, I all the time felt a bit totally different being queer. Whereas different boys had been enjoying basketball and soccer, I used to be weirdly interested in magazines. I’d simply stare in any respect these covers on journal stands and felt I would like to be a part of that. I moved to London once I was 17 for St Martins Basis, BA and MA, and my observe has all the time been trend design with knitwear. I’ve all the time cherished that with knit, I am controlling the result.
‘The problem this season is easy methods to translate the Oscar wardrobe into the hotter months. I believe to start with, we positively labored with much more experimental supplies. This season, we’re attempting to play with the potential for silk and linen blends and extra conventional yarns that folks would affiliate with a classic sort of look, like Irish Donegal and Harris thread. We wish to interact with that historical past, however with somewhat twist, adapting them to be extra modern and hopefully extra stylish.’
The place to purchase
At Dover Avenue Market and its webstore.
Supply: Wallpaper
