Graphic Designer / Brand Visual Identity

jouissance creates the scents of desire, pleasure, subversion, and an excess of life. Desire is complicated, it thrives on tension and takes pleasure in contradiction. Restraint and freedom, fantasy and reality, Eros and Thanatos: the brand represents the opposing drives that women are pressured to choose between, and liberates them to take both.

jouissance stands as a countertype to one-dimensional stereotypes of female empowerment: the values we espouse are mystery, complexity, irreverence, and liberation through submission. We honour imperfect beauty, striving to represent paradoxes that women are told to conceal. The woman who wears jouissance wishes to impress no-one but herself, and chooses the pursuit of pleasure over the avoidance of pain.

Our scents are inspired by female protagonists of the erotic classics in literature and cinema of the 20th century – Story of O, The Sexual Life of Catherine M, Delta of Venus – stories which today still manage to discompose and arouse readers thanks to their radical complexity. We read Bataille, Marquis de Sade, Freud and Lacan, and watch Tinto Brass, Walerian Borowczyk and Alain Robbe-Grillet.