Every once in a while, I interview a person in the rarified world of superyachts, a builder, designer or owner for example, who transcends the rarified world of superyachts. And that’s exactly what happened when I met the London-based interior designer Oz Lancaster. In fact, simply introducing her as a “London-based interior designer” does not come close to capturing the special essence she brings to the interiors she designs in some of the most exquisite homes and superyachts in the world.
She is fascinated by speed. The speed of a yacht cutting through the water. The engineering of a great car. The exhilaration of an idea becoming reality. She readily admits that when she wants something done, she tends to want it yesterday. And yet, she has a tattoo, of the word SABIR that’s associated with patience across several languages and cultures.
The irony is not lost on her.
For Oz, patience is not about slowing down. It is about staying with an idea long enough to push it beyond the obvious. “My patience is constantly tested by design because, for me, designing never really finishes,” she says. “It is a process of molding, questioning and pushing. There is always another detail. Another possibility. Another way it could be better.”
That restless instinct started remarkably early. As she explains: “An artist first noticed my drawings when I was three. At that age, I drew on everything, walls, every scrap of paper I could find, oranges, even pieces of bread. I had such a special bond with my pencils that they were my little companions. There was an entire world happening between me and those pencils, and colors. And despite my lifelong love affair with color, pink and I never quite 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 her own studio, OS Designs & Partners. But London gave her more than just a career: it added another layer to her creative identity.
Her Mediterranean upbringing had already given her an instinct for warmth, generosity, colour and hospitality. London introduced contrast: complexity, architectural discipline, urban energy and a different way of looking at proportion and detail. The combination has become central to her work. One softened her eye. The other sharpened it.
“I think the Mediterranean side of me softened the way I see colour and how colors change with the light rather than simply sit on a surface which gave me that sense of warmth and hospitality,” she says. “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 characteristic irony “alongside my patience.”
But beneath the humour is a designer with an unusually competitive relationship with herself. Oz is far less interested in what other designers are doing than in testing the boundaries of her own work. “I have never been interested in running somebody else’s race,” she says. “For me it has always been about competing with myself.” It is perhaps why defining her work through a single aesthetic is difficult.
Clients do not necessarily come to Oz asking for a recognisable “Oz Lancaster look.” They come for her eyes, her instinct, her ears, her experience, and also where she comes from. “My background keeps me grounded, and i think that’s part of what makes my work authentic, she says. “I don’t want to reproduce somebody else’s idea of luxury. I want to create something that could only belong to that client, in that place, and at that moment.”
That approach has now been tested across more than 400 projects internationally, ranging from private residences, hospitality, commercial spaces and yachts. And one of the clearest demonstrations of that philosophy is her collaboration with Feadship on Concept C, created in connection with the shipyard’s 75th anniversary.
“I never look at a yacht as simply a collection of beautifully decorated rooms,” she says. “A yacht is architecture in motion. Every centimetre matters. You are dealing with proportion, circulation, engineering, weight, light, movement and, ultimately, the way somebody experiences a space while travelling through an ever-changing landscape.” Oz began with the diamond as the central design concept, taking inspiration from its facets, precision and relationship with light. Organic forms became the starting reference for the softer architectural language that flows throughout the interior.
“The diamond provided the concept; nature provided the softness,” she says. Sustainability was also considered from the outset, with the yacht developed with sustainability in mind. The material palette included carefully considered materials, reflecting a more conscious approach to design without compromising the sense of luxury. “To be part of Feadship’s 75th anniversary was incredibly meaningful to me. It was not simply another project; it was the opportunity to contribute to a milestone for one of the most respected names in yachting. Concept C gave me the freedom to respect Feadship’s heritage and engineering while still challenging the expected language of yacht interiors.”
Not because Oz is afraid of drama, quite the opposite but because she believes the strongest interiors do not need to announce their value, they reveal themselves gradually, a junction, a shadow line, the way stone meets timber. A piece of furniture designed specifically for the person who will use it.
It is also why Oz is increasingly reluctant to use one of luxury design’s most overworked words. “Everybody says bespoke,” she says. “I’m much more interested in creating something that has not existed before.”
Her descriptions of rooms are similarly emotional rather than technical.
For Oz, a bedroom is “where the world fades and the senses take over.”
A bathroom becomes “a private theatre of water, stone and light.”
And the office is the place “where ideas sharpen and imagination takes over.”
Those phrases reveal something important about the way she works. Oz does not really separate design from life. Her eye follows her everywhere. It appears in the cars she chooses, the way she dresses, the art she collects, the drawings scattered around the studio and even the unexpected collection of Smurfs that sits comfortably alongside samples of stone, timber and fabric. Nothing feels overly curated. It simply feels unmistakably hers.
And neither is the culture she has built inside OS Designs & Partners. Oz describes her team less as employees than as an extended family, people drawn together by the same obsession with making the work better. Her own draft puts it simply: better design, bigger vision.
Perhaps that is the best way to understand Oz Lancaster. Not through one room, one material or one yacht. And certainly not through a predetermined signature style.
Her signature is the constant movement forward. The refusal to accept that the first solution is necessarily the best one. The instinct to question, redraw and refine. The desire to create something her clients have not seen before and something she herself has not done before. Her life, much like her work, is built around the same idea, better design, a bigger vision, and always something more to discover.
Which brings us back to that tattoo. SABIR. Patience.
For somebody who wants everything yesterday, it seems almost perfectly chosen. Because Oz may love speed. But she is in no hurry to stop evolving.
