Jouissance

Jouissance is a London fragrance house founded by Cherry Cheng, who is also its creative director. Cheng came to perfume from the art world and began the house during the lockdown, naming it after the French feminist idea of jouissance, a pleasure that exceeds the limits set on it. The company was registered in 2022 and the first collection reached shoppers in 2024.

The house builds each scent around female-authored erotic literature and women artists. The debut collection draws on three writers: En Plein Air, from Catherine Millet; La Bague d'O, from Anne Desclos and The Story of O; and Les Cahiers Secrets, from the early diaries of Anaïs Nin. Each is paired with a year, so that the scent can echo the perfumery of that moment. La Camionera, released in 2026, is a collaboration with a London lesbian bar and cafe and was made by Cheng herself.

The style is deliberately provocative rather than clean. The house says it subverts modern trends for unobtrusive smells and uses uncanny aldehydes, dank and dirty undertones and musks. En Plein Air is a bright citrus over white flowers and rain. La Bague d'O pairs pink pepper and orange with rose, jasmine, amber and patchouli. Les Cahiers Secrets is a powdery lily, cumin and orris scent. The first collection was composed with outside perfumers, and the house names them on each product page.

Jouissance sits in independent niche perfumery, close to art and literature. It is a small founder-led range, sold through its own website, an online library of out-of-print books and selected stockists such as Liberty in London and the bookshop Tenderbooks. It suits wearers who want a perfume with an idea behind it and who enjoy musky, powdery and animalic notes.