Pretty florals, psychoanalysis, and the sublimated erotics of Jouissance Parfums’ debut collection.
If one were to construct some grand machine whose sole purpose was to read my text messages and Google searches to generate a brand identity most likely to rope me into wanting a sample set, it might look something like the world Cherry Cheng has crafted with Jouissance Parfums. Emphasis on the word ‘craft’ – for the art direction, design choices, and multidisciplinary rollout for this set of new fragrances is compelling beyond the likes of which is expected or ever seen in modern fragrance markets. Little details, all carefully attended to, create a cohesive presence catering to the intersection between a very modern post-coquette girlblogging clientele and the overindulgent, highly aestheticized women’s erotic literature predating mid-20th century feminist psychoanalysis. Finally, a niche perfume house for young women who liberally describe situations as ‘Kafkaesque’ and have notifications enabled for the Anaïs Nin Twitter bot. The devil is truly in the details with the world of Jouissance: I am deeply enchanted by mock lace trim on the paper given with their Collected Works sample set, their website selling first edition copies of Unica Zürn’s letters and writings, and a fabulous launch party-cum-short story reading at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts. As a constant advocate for the continued tradition of L’écriture féminine in my own critical and artistic practice, I wholeheartedly echo both Jouissance’s inspiration from the writings of Cixous and the sentiment that perfume should not only be multidisciplinary, but inter-critical.
First encountering these touchpoints in graduate school at Goldsmiths, Cheng clearly has an anachronistic sort of feminine pleasure at the forefront of the design and branding of these fragrances. I do feel a somewhat troubling tension between the explicitly modern sex-positive feminist branding of the house, and the notoriously sadomasochistic stories that inspire its creation. The little bobblehead version of Andrea Dworkin that lives in the top left corner of my critical mind wants me to press harder on the idea of buying and selling a pretty-smelling beauty product to women inspired by a published fantasy of becoming a free-use sexual slave, but the idealist in me can’t help but swoon for the delightful word of women’s photography, performance, and scent Jouissance conjures in its complicated wake. One could argue that Cheng’s association of the theoretical idea of jouissance with Cixous and not Lacan inherently reveals the houses’ critical stance as both anti-patriarchal and distinctly contemporary. The idealization of writers like Nin who have remained difficult to reconcile with second-wave feminist praxis could at its most generous not necessarily condone or glamorize sexual violence, but gesture towards what Lacan termed “supplementary jouissance… a jouissance of the body which is beyond the phallus.”
Nevertheless, to a very mixed cultural effect, the three fragrances that consist of Jouissance’s debut collection are very delicate, feminine, and naturalistic. I would love to see future releases from Cheng transgress and provoke in not only name but olfactory practice as well. Perhaps it would make me feel better about their flirtation with a feminist take on female submission or even the idea of a feminist perfume house in general if the scents they created were on a certain level – ugly and idiosyncratic enough to not beguile unbeknownst men. But like many of the stories they are inspired by, the more time you spend with these seemingly pretty things, the more their tiny little vulgar idiosyncrasies are revealed.
La Bague D’O is clearly presented as the crown jewel of the collection and does present perhaps the most novel appeal to the discerning perfume collector. Inspired by Anne Desclos’ fictitious chronicle of sexual servitude Story of O — La Bague is Damask rose in delicate chains. Drawing extreme similarities between Rossy de Palma’s well-loved signature fragrance for the far more problematic male provocateurs at Etat Libre d’Orange, La Bague D’O resonates a neat and feminine floral core with far-out metallic frequencies. The opening presents a single squeezed orange and a crackling of pepper, but quickly submits its spice to a strong and dense rose geranium similar to the hybrid blooms found in Middle Eastern attars. I don’t smell any other flowers here, but rather, the tinny taste of blood that accents the central accord like a promise. The perfume’s copy promises an animalic defilement of these florals, but to me, the castoreum base does not necessarily take center stage but rather fleshes out the accord of ‘steel chains’ written of in La Bague’s top notes. As it wears, it becomes more aggressive, yielding to a vaguely animalic base for a number of very sophisticated hours. Certainly the strongest wear of the three sisters, I can easily see this one garnering the most popularity. Wear La Bague D’O if you love an unconventional rose fragrance, or if you crawl FetLife looking for a full-time daddy dom like a bad habit you can’t quite scratch.
In comparison to the other two fragrances, En Plein Air is perhaps the least anachronistic, my least favorite, and the least shocking. Inspired by the life and sexual exploits of Catherine Millet, its copy specifically references her oft-recounted love of outdoor orgies. Given such an explicit set of references, I am surprised by how clean this fragrance smells. The petrichor accord here is like that of Le Labo’s Baie 19, laden in airy earthiness and a synthetic musk base. Dissimilar, however, is the overdose of grapefruit zest in the opening. Easily accessible to anyone who loves a good citrus, I can imagine this sitting prettily on the collarbone of a young woman with a respectable office job, who maybe hides underneath a pristine and approachable exterior the vaguest inclination towards something off.
I knew before I had even smelled this set that Les Cahiers Secrets would be my favorite of the set. Inspired by the early diaries of Anaïs Nin, its copy references the bohemian atmosphere of her writing circle and the small aesthetic indulgences she would insist on amongst her working artist squalor. The website specifically uses the dreaded phrase “grandma scent” to refer to the general boudoir atmosphere it creates: nine times out of ten, it’s code for powdery perfume that smells so good it gatekeeps Gen-Z girls with poor misguided hearts desperately afraid of aging and noses broken from overexposure to the noxious rose-lychee-vanilla accord in vapid perfumes like Delina Exclusif. On skin, Cahiers wears like a hyper-atmospheric interpretation of a classic Belle Époque perfume. Like spraying L'heure Bleue through a tightly stretched pair of pantyhose, vague kitchen spices mingle with orris and skin musk. This is the direction I would love to see Jouissance continue in – perfume that smells evocative, romantic, and ancestral to certain women, and wholly sexually expired to the clueless men who pursue them. The central floral here is a gorgeous lily. I’m not shy about my love for mournful lily masterworks like Passage D’Enfer, and in its delicacy, this does perhaps reference Giacobetti’s work. Wear this perfume if you love Comme des Garçons’ iconic Sticky Cake, and wish it went more in the direction of Vivienne Westwood’s tragically discontinued Boudoir. My gorgeously designed full bottle will surely be an easy reach for the frigid months of the oncoming winter, surrounding my person with a tiny little halo of makeup powder, flushed skin, and single flowers tied up in neat little white ribbons. 🌀
Audrey Robinovitz is a multidisciplinary artist, scholar, and self-professed perfume critic. Her work intersects with the continued traditions of fiber and olfactory arts, post-structural feminism, and media studies. At this very moment, she is most likely either smelling perfume or taking pictures of flowers.