Every now and then, I interview someone from the exclusive world of superyachts—a builder, a designer, or an owner, for example—who transcends that universe. And that’s exactly what happened when I met London-based interior designer Oz Lancaster. In fact, simply introducing her as a “London-based interior designer” fails to capture the special essence she brings to the interiors she designs in some of the world’s most exquisite homes and superyachts.
He is fascinated by speed: the speed of a yacht cutting through the water, the engineering of a great car, the thrill of an idea becoming reality. He readily admits that when he wants something, he wants it yesterday. And yet, he has a tattoo of the word SABIR, which is associated with patience in various languages and cultures.
The irony doesn’t escape him.
For Oz, patience isn’t about slowing down, but about staying with an idea long enough to take it beyond the obvious. “My patience is constantly put to the test with design, because for me, designing never really ends,” he says. “It’s a process of shaping, questioning, and pushing. There’s always another detail, another possibility, another way to make it better.”
That restless instinct began very early on. As she herself explains: “An artist first took notice of my drawings when I was three years old. At that age, I drew everything: walls, any scrap of paper I could find, oranges, even pieces of bread. I had such a special bond with my pencils—they were my little companions. There was a whole world between those pencils, those colors, and me. And despite my lifelong love of color, pink and I never got along.”
The main salon of Feadship’s Concept C, designed by Os Designs & Partners. PHOTO: Os Designs & Partners
What began as an instinct eventually became a career. Oz left Cyprus for London to study design, and after graduating, he began working in interior design before founding his own studio, OS Designs & Partners. But London gave him more than just a career: it added another layer to his creative identity.
Her Mediterranean upbringing had already given her a natural instinct for warmth, generosity, color, and hospitality. London provided the contrast: complexity, architectural discipline, urban energy, and a different way of looking at proportion and detail. That combination has become central to her work. One softened his vision. The other refined it.
“I think my Mediterranean background softened the way I see color and how colors change with the light rather than simply resting on a surface, which gave me that sense of warmth and hospitality,” she explains. “London made me more complex. It taught me to look at things differently and to embrace tension and contrast.” Kindness, she says, is one of her greatest strengths, before adding, with her characteristic irony, “along with my patience.”
But beneath the humor lies a designer with an unusually competitive relationship with herself. Oz is far less interested in what other designers are doing than in testing the limits of her own work. “I’ve never been interested in running someone else’s race,” she says. “For me, it’s always been about competing with myself.” Perhaps that’s why it’s difficult to define her work through a single aesthetic.
Clients don’t come to Oz looking for a recognizable “Oz Lancaster style.” They come for his vision, his instinct, his ear, his experience, and also for his roots. “My roots keep me grounded, and I think that’s part of what makes my work authentic,” he explains. “I don’t want to replicate someone else’s idea of luxury. I want to create something that can only belong to that client, in that place and at that moment.”
This approach has already been put to the test in more than 400 international projects, including private residences, hospitality spaces, commercial properties, and yachts. And one of the clearest examples of this philosophy is its collaboration with Feadship on the Concept C, created to mark the shipyard’s 75th anniversary.
“I never see a yacht as just a collection of beautifully decorated rooms,” he says. “A yacht is architecture in motion. Every centimeter matters. You work with proportion, circulation, engineering, weight, light, movement, and, ultimately, with the way someone experiences a space as they move through an ever-changing landscape.” Oz took the diamond as his central design concept, drawing inspiration from its facets, its precision, and its relationship with light. Organic forms became the initial reference for the softer architectural language that runs throughout the interior.
“The diamond provided the concept; nature, the softness,” he explains. Sustainability was also taken into account from the very beginning, with the yacht designed with that idea in mind. The selection of materials included carefully considered choices, reflecting a more conscious approach to design without sacrificing the sense of luxury. “Being part of Feadship’s 75th anniversary was hugely meaningful to me. It wasn’t just another project; it was an opportunity to contribute to a milestone for one of the most respected names in the yachting industry. Concept C gave me the freedom to honor Feadship’s legacy and engineering while challenging the expected design language of yacht interiors.”
Not because Oz is afraid of drama—quite the opposite—but because he believes that the most powerful interiors don’t need to advertise their value: they reveal themselves little by little, in the interplay of planes, a line of shadow, the way stone meets wood. A piece of furniture designed specifically for the person who will use it.
That’s why she’s also becoming increasingly reluctant to use one of the most overused terms in luxury design. “Everyone says ‘bespoke,'” she says. “I’m much more interested in creating something that hasn’t existed before.”
His descriptions of spaces are more emotional than technical.
For Oz, a bedroom is “where the world fades away and the senses take over.”
A bathroom becomes “a private theater of water, stone, and light.”
And the office is the place “where ideas take shape and imagination takes the lead.”
Those statements reveal something important about her approach to work. Oz doesn’t really separate design from life. Her eye follows her everywhere. It shows up in the cars he chooses, in the way he dresses, in the art he collects, in the drawings scattered throughout his studio, and even in his unexpected collection of Smurfs, which coexists seamlessly alongside samples of stone, wood, and fabric. Nothing feels overly contrived. It simply feels unmistakably hers.
And the same is true of the culture he has built at OS Designs & Partners. Oz describes his team more as an extended family than as employees: people united by the same obsession with improving their work. His own motto sums it up simply: better design, more ambitious vision.
Perhaps that is the best way to understand Oz Lancaster—not through a single room, a single material, or a single yacht. And certainly not through a predetermined style.
Her hallmark is a constant drive to move forward. A refusal to accept that the first solution is necessarily the best. An instinct to question, reimagine, and refine. The desire to create something her clients haven’t seen before—and something she herself hasn’t done before. Her life, just like her work, is built on the same idea: better design, a more ambitious vision, and always something more to discover.
Which brings us back to that tattoo. KNOWLEDGE. Patience.
For someone who wants everything done yesterday, it seems like an almost perfect choice. Because Oz may love speed, but he’s in no hurry to stop evolving.
