Oscar Ouyang’s imaginative knitwear makes him a London Fashion Week name to watch

Rising talent, names to know: ‘Uprising’ is a monthly feature highlighting an energetic new vanguard of fashion talent, selected by the Wallpaper* style team.

Crib notes

Name: Oscar Ouyang

Brand: Oscar Ouyang

Alumnus of: Central Saint Martins MA

City: London

Signature style: Technically experimental knitwear woven with stories found in anime, nature, and the Middle Ages.

Design philosophy

Oscar Ouyang has found a quiet corner of an east London pub to speak on the phone, somewhere between his Hoxton studio and castings for his first runway show. ‘We’ll see over 100 models this week,’ he says, noting how the process has opened a Pandora’s box of new – and some stressful – aspects to running a brand. ‘It’s the first time I’ve worked with a really established hairstylist, stylist, photographer, and casting director. You begin to see how everyone comes together to build a narrative. Each person brings a bit of themselves into it, which has been amazing.’

Growing up in Beijing’s Haidian district, Ouyang launched his namesake label swiftly after graduating from Central Saint Martins’ (CSM) MA knitwear course two years ago. Already, he’s generated an air of intrigue around the brand, with editors taking notice and his designs appearing on rails in Dover Street Market seemingly overnight. When you see his clothes, however, it's clear this is by no stroke of chance. Pushing the humble knit to imaginative new realms, Ouyang’s designs are unlike anything else out there. He takes pride in creating his own materials from thread to garment, weaving influences from Studio Ghibli, medieval Italian manuscripts, and the piercing street photography of Chris Killip into forms that are as technically experimental as they are resolutely wearable.

As he prepares to make his London Fashion Week debut tomorrow (18 September 2025), joining the ranks of the Newgen cohort, Ouyang is intent on proving knitwear to be as exciting a proposition as any other design practice. ‘When you think of knitwear, you probably picture something traditional or maybe you associate it with grannies,’ he says. ‘Even at luxury brands, it’s always in the background.’ Since his first days at CSM, however, Ouyang has been taken by the fluid potential of the craft. ‘Some part of me is really drawn to the idea that you can create something from just a thread, and all the possibilities that come with that,’ he explains. ‘There’s far less structure than other forms of design. You can literally take it anywhere.’

Whether its maker is working on antiquated looms or spooling yak wool sourced from Mongolia, each piece is a time-consuming labour of love. This effort is felt in the mystic life that brims in Ouyang’s knits, where traditional Fair Isle jumpers are darkened into wonky shapes of monochromatic intrigue, tendrils of wool drift from chunky earth-toned weaves, and stiff army gear is cut into youthful silhouettes that play on the eclecticism of Japanese street style. While Ouyang is drawn to the animated worlds of Princess Mononoke or Zelda, and to designers like Jun Takahashi and Number (N)ine – admiring, he says, their ability to refract European culture through an East Asian design identity – his first port of call for inspiration is always his friendship group. ‘I definitely look at what everyone around me wears,’ he says. ‘That’s what feels most important to me as a designer. I want to make things my circle will feel comfortable putting on.’

Ouyang’s S/S 2026 collection, previewed here on Wallpaper*, expands on this world with the added challenge of telling a knitwear story for the warmer months. Ever the romantic storyteller, he has titled it ‘Don’t Shoot The Messenger’, taking the motif of carrier birds such as owls, doves and eagles as a throughline. Offsetting practical shapes with delicate flourishes of glamour, its most beautiful pieces see chicken and turkey feathers (sourced from the otherwise discarded leftovers of the meat industry) line soft jersey beanies and mini shorts. Elsewhere, T-shirts are hand-crocheted from lustrously breathable silks and linens, while Ouyang has his fun with heritage fabrics, spinning typically weighty Irish Donegal yarns into ultra-light jumpers and waxing featherlight Harris tweed jackets to protect against summer downpours. Cohesive, emotional, and clever, the result is a confident debut from a young designer who knows exactly what he wants to create and what his community wants to wear.

‘The idea was a kind of athletic look but with a really crazy level of craftsmanship,’ he says of its making. ‘I wanted it to feel effortlessly luxurious.’ While the collection translates Ouyang’s subversive design language for summer heat, the designer has stuck to his guns with a signature earthy palette. ‘I wear so much khaki, it’s like black to me,’ he says. ‘So we have lots of that and colours with a melange tone in them, where a plain colour is textured on top. There’s black, white, grey, sandy beige and navy blue – really classic colours.’

Beneath the transportive craft of the clothes, it was important to the designer that the collection also be tethered to our present moment. ‘We were thinking about these birds and the phrase ‘don’t shoot the messenger’,’ says Ouyang. ‘If the message is intercepted, it causes chaos. There is so much miscommunication in the world right now, especially online. I feel like the gap between what we see and real events is getting bigger and bigger.’ In practice, this grounding emerges not only in the collection’s moody undercurrent, but also in its functionality. Ouyang is always thinking about how his pieces feel on the skin. ‘As much as we try to push the boundaries of knitwear, I feel like it still needs to be comfortable,’ he says ‘If you're getting a jumper, it still needs to be a protective layer and have all the things you want to feel from a jumper.’

That said, the piece Ouyang is most eager to unveil tomorrow is one made specifically for the runway – a dramatic metallic-gold knitted evening dress, cut with a deep V-back and tassels that skim the floor. ‘It’s very glamorous,’ he says. ‘We’ve done so much ready-to-wear the past four seasons, so that look has a special place in my heart right now. We haven't found the right model for it yet, but I’ve been looking for them throughout the casting.’

As the show looms closer, the designer is readying himself to share a fully realised portrait of his brand and the intrepid spirit of the community that he’s steadily growing around it. ‘With the music and the set, we're really trying to bring the Oscar boy or girl to life,’ he says. ‘It’s a chance to really push my community's identity. I want it to be full of energy and be fresh, but with a little bit of a naiveness. It's the feeling of having a curiosity towards the world: open-minded but confident.’

In their words

‘Growing up in Beijing, I always felt a bit different being queer. While other boys were playing basketball and football, I was weirdly attracted to magazines. I’d just stare at all these covers on magazine stands and felt I'd love to be part of that. I moved to London when I was 17 for St Martins Foundation, BA and MA, and my practice has always been fashion design with knitwear. I’ve always loved that with knit, I'm controlling the outcome.

‘The challenge this season is how to translate the Oscar wardrobe into the warmer months. I think in the beginning, we definitely worked with a lot more experimental materials. This season, we're trying to play with the possibility of silk and linen blends and more traditional yarns that people would associate with a vintage kind of look, like Irish Donegal and Harris thread. We want to engage with that history, but with a little twist, adapting them to be more contemporary and hopefully more chic.’

Where to buy

At Dover Street Market and its webstore.