Artist. Academic degree in medicine. Founder and director of creation and style of OSKLEN. Creative director of OM.art, his art and special projects studio. Oskar’s constant need for experimentation and a lifestyle in touch with the city, nature and the arts are the main sources of inspiration of his creative process.

Oskar Metsavaht is internationally renowned as one of the forerunners of the New Luxury concept that advocates conscious fashion and sustainable luxury. According to him, “a brand is identified as luxurious if it involves so-called noble values. These, however, imply social concern and the preservation of natural resources for the next generations.”

Sustainability has always been on the agenda of his projects and part of OSKLEN’s path. In the early 2000s, Oskar launched E-brigade, a movement that aims to raise awareness and to spread environmental information, thus transforming concepts into attitudes. He is often invited to lecture at global conferences, such as the Milano Fashion Summit and the Ethical Fashion Paris. At the invitation of Vogue America’s fashion editor Anna Wintour, Oskar also participated in the Runway to Green event, which gathers the world’s largest brands to explore the idea of sustainability.

Oskar is also the founder of the Instituto-e, which develops projects such as the one about e-fabrics. In partnership with other companies, institutions and research centers, that project identifies fabrics and materials that are developed based on socio-environmental criteria, such as fish leather, Amazonian jute and silk straw fibers, latex, organic cotton, among others.

OSKLEN was named “Emerging Luxury Brand of the Year” in London and Oskar was ranked by the Fast Company magazine as the fourth most innovative person in Brazil and included among the 100 most creative business people in the world. In the same year, he was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and one of the speakers at the International Herald Tribune Hot Luxury event.

Still in 2011, he was one of SWU’s speakers, alongside Neil Young, Bob Geldof and others. He was appointed a Member of Inhotim’s Advisory Board in Minas Gerais, one of Brazil’s most important contemporary art collections and allegedly Latin America’s largest outdoor art center.

Oskar Metsavaht was invited to act as UNESCO’s official representative at Rio +20, occasion on which his Instituto-e designed the e-Prize, an official event award for sustainability, which honored some of the most important initiatives developed over the last 20 years since the ECO 92.

Alongside names like Arcade Fire, Chris Milk and Takeshi Murata, Oskar was invited to join the cast of “The Creators Project,” VICE’s global project in partnership with Intel that aims to gather the most expressive artists in art, design, fashion, and music.

The following year, OSKLEN was cited by two prominent international publications. In his book, “L’Orizzonte degli Eventi” (“The Enigma of the Horizon”), Italian professor Fabriano Fabbri mentions Oskar Metsavaht as one of the designers that best illustrates the group of creative artists in the purest sense. “Global Luxury Trend” by Jonas Hoffmann and Ivan Coste-Manière contains an entire chapter about OSKLEN and Oskar, emphasizing the new luxury concept proposed by the brand.

At the invitation of California’s government, Oskar made his first picture exhibition in Brazil. ‘In California’ revealed his conceptual view of iconic places of the American state, such as Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu and the Vasquez Rocks desert. He also showed his work in Miami, at the Quintenz Gallery in Aspen, and at the Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires.

In the same year, Oskar performed a creative immersion at Inhotim. This experience resulted in an installation called ‘Interfaces’, which was exhibited at the ‘Made by... Feito por brasileiros’ art show at the Cidade Matarazzo, São Paulo. The exhibition marked the opening of the space, which showed works by Brazilian artists such as Tunga and Vik Muniz. Inhotim also inspired OSKLEN’s summer 2015 collection. Still in 2014, Oskar was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit. The award is given to personalities and institutions that contribute to Brazilian culture.

After a creative immersion at the Ashaninka tribe in Acre, Oskar launched a collection inspired by the culture and aesthetics of that indigenous community. The collection received an outstanding review by renowned British journalist Suzy Menkes. Oskar was also one of the artists who took part in the Ocupação Mauá at ArtRio, presenting the interactive video installation ‘Interfaces ll - Man // Cosmos // Forest’.

He set up ‘Christ the Redeemer by Oskar Metsavaht’, which marked the reopening of Rio de Janeiro’s Historical Museum. The Christ monument and its history got a contemporary reading through photos, paintings and video installations. Oskar also launched the Monbupurih collection at the first fashion show held outside Rio’s Museum of Tomorrow.

‘Ipanema by Oskar Metsavaht’ was shown at the Laura Alvim Culture House. It included paintings, installations, projections and photographs that reveal the artist’s vision of that area. Throughout the show, the Instituto-e promoted “re-view Ipanema”, offering debates and creativity workshops to the public.

Still in 2017, Oskar was one of the lecturers of the “How to sell Brazil” panel at the Brazil Conference at Harvard. He was also invited by the New York University to take part in the “Sustainability of Ethical Fashion in our Brave New World” event about fashion and sustainability. In June, Oskar addressed the first Ocean Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Representing Brazil and the countries of the South Atlantic, Oskar opened the discussion on the creation of the SAWS – South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary – a whale sanctuary in the region that includes Brazil, Argentina, Gabon, Uruguay, and South Africa.

Oskar Metsavaht’s participation in the creative exercise of the film ‘Soundtrack’, directed by the double 300ml and featuring Selton Mello, Ralph Ineson and Seu Jorge, was the starting point for the creation of OSKLEN’s Winter 17 Collection. The film and the collection were made at the same time, an unprecedented development of creation. The project also resulted in an exhibition, ‘Soundtrack by Oskar Metsavaht’, which was displayed at the Museum of Image and Sound, São Paulo. Oskar took on the point of view of the film’s protagonist, Cris, starred by Selton Mello, thus materializing the artist’s final project.