Oscar Ouyang: The Films That Made Me

Teasing his expansion into womenswear for Spring/Summer 2027, London-based designer Oscar Ouyang shares five films that have shaped the evolving narrative of his namesake label

Fashion and film occupy the same space in Oscar Ouyang’s imagination. For him, both are exercises in building worlds and losing yourself in them. “You’re telling a story and building a world through a medium that simultaneously hides you,” says the designer. This idea has shaped Ouyang’s practice since he graduated from Central Saint Martins’ MA Fashion course in 2023 and launched his namesake label. His role as a designer, as he sees it, is not to place himself at the centre, but to construct a universe that others can inhabit. 

In 2025, Ouyang joined BFC Newgen and made his London Fashion Week runway debut with his Spring/Summer 2026 collection, establishing himself as a distinctive voice in the capital. His intricate knitwear softens the familiar codes of menswear, while his early collections drew on medieval folklore and the dreamlike worlds of Hayao Miyazaki’s cinema. In his Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, knives appeared on shirt collars and textile sword belts jutted from long-sleeved Henley shirts – the wardrobe of an animated hero translated into knitwear, shirting and everyday menswear. 

Now 27, Ouyang, who grew up in Beijing’s Haidian district, belongs to a generation for whom digital landscapes became a natural extension of the quotidian. As the designer and his brand have matured, however, those speculative worlds have become increasingly tethered to familiar lived experiences. As he prepares to launch womenswear in earnest for Spring/Summer 2027, Ouyang has turned to live action – where animation once provided the visual grammar of his work, the designer is now immersing himself in complex representations of women in film. “Animation, for me, is about the power to dream but as the brand has evolved, and I’m getting older, I have started grounding myself more in reality,” he says.

When the designer speaks to AnOther it’s his lunch break, a brief pause amid the construction of a new chapter for the brand. Here, he reflects on the five films that have become creative touchstones for his universe, as well as those shaping the womenswear expansion to be revealed in September during London Fashion Week.

1. Queer, 2024

“I love Queer. I almost didn’t want to talk about it because it might feel cliché, but cinema has shaped my perception of queerness. The only films I feel compelled to see in the theatre are queer films. In this one, it’s easy to predict the tragic ending. Maybe it’s something with culture, maybe it’s our history, but gay happy endings are scarce. 

“Queer culture is always reinventing itself and I don’t think public perception can keep up. Straight people have their stories written out, whereas for us, all our stories have open endings. Even in the way I design, my queerness is melancholic. The boys always look a bit sad. In fashion, we don’t celebrate happiness because it can seem superficial. As a queer person, you wake up ready for the worst, you have to have your tools sharpened and be ready to fight back. 

“My appreciation for Queer also ties in with who I was when I first watched it. I was just out of university and was going out a lot, trying to find connection in queer spaces. There was a lot of frustration, a lot of highs and lows.”

2. Paprika, 2006

“The first time I saw Paprika, I was probably in high school. It’s a film I find myself constantly going back to. It’s a surrealist animation about a headset that allows people to enter a dreamscape. It’s a thriller, which is a genre I don’t usually love – it’s too nerve-racking – but there’s something about animation that allows me to enjoy it. It gives me a certain distance. I don’t mind blood as long as the blood is blue or green; it just can’t be red. What intrigues me the most is the way they animated it. It’s an explosion of colours, toys and characters. Growing up, I loved collecting objects: stuffed toys, little gadgets, anything. Now, they all sit in a cabinet next to my bed watching me sleep, which my boyfriend hates. But I love them because they remind me of Paprika’s dream world. In it, characters morph into toys. There’s something that resonates with me. Self-objectification is something that I think about a lot in my work.”

3. Orlando, 1992

“Spring/Summer 2027 is the first season we’re approaching womenswear properly. Before, the female characters in the shows had supporting roles. This season, they’re going to stand. Because of that, Orlando is a film I’ve been thinking about a lot. There’s something in the fluid femininity of Tilda Swinton that is really interesting and that complements the androgyny of the character well. I’m a huge fan of Virginia Woolf so I read the book way before seeing the movie, which was only maybe three years ago. There’s a perverse undertone to it, a fetishisation of youth and beauty. You have to stay pretty forever, you cannot fade. 

“This year marks ten years I’ve been in London and I’m still fascinated by England’s visual history, and the story itself embodies British culture in a way I find appealing. Orlando is a rich visual reference, and Sandy Powell’s costume design has a distinctive quality that continues to inspire me.” 

4. Farewell My Concubine, 1993

“There aren’t many Chinese queer films. Growing up, Farewell My Concubine was one of two I had encountered. It’s a gorgeous film with a theatrical and cultural form of storytelling. It spans almost 50 years of modern Chinese history, beginning in the 1920s and moving through the Japanese occupation, civil war, Communist victory and Cultural Revolution. The two main characters meet when they are children and grow up training in traditional Chinese opera. The older one always plays the general, and the younger one plays the concubine, because in traditional Chinese opera all the female roles were played by men. That’s part of the queerness in our culture. The story follows them from childhood until death. The film is set in Beijing, where I grew up. It allowed me to see myself in a queer story. The costume design is truly amazing. I think the Cultural Revolution created a rupture in modern Chinese culture, distancing the country from parts of its artistic and material past. So much craftsmanship and ornamentation had been preserved through imperial China. This film gives me a taste of that opulence.”

5. Castle in the Sky, 1986

“I might have watched Castle in the Sky more than any other film. There’s something about Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack that gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. It takes me back to a desire I had as a child: I was obsessed with the idea of travelling somewhere unexplored. In the film, Laputa is a floating island belonging to a lost civilisation that once thrived but has since been hidden away. You look at society as a whole and can’t help drawing parallels. Where are we going? Are we driving ourselves towards becoming a lost civilisation? The process of exploration is also about searching for your future. There’s something striking about Hayao Miyazaki’s films. The good characters are not usually the institutionally sanctioned ones. The villains are often the military or other large structures of power. You grow up and you understand he was right. His films are filled with images of war, but they never feel didactic. Everything is presented as a fairy tale.”