Bottling the highs of desire

In the architecture of desire, perfume occupies the threshold: it precedes our entrance into a room and lingers long after our bodies have gone. A perfume can be a flirtation or a flag. For most of us, it is the art of wearing we’re most concerned with, but what of the scent creators?  When composed with intention, as the most talented olfactory sorceresses know, a fragrance can become something even more dangerous: a portal into a secret self.

This is the terrain that Cherry Cheng, founder of the cult-favorite fragrance and publishing brand Jouissance, explores with precision. Her scents are rich with reference and complexity and yet remain utterly wearable. They are historical yet modern; literary, yet erotic. Think Anaïs Nin’s diaries in 1930s Paris, reinterpreted through powdery iris and provocative cumin. Think a submissive sex-slave romance translated into aldehydes and steel mixed with skin. For Cherry, perfumery is not merely olfactory—it’s a storytelling medium, one that can twist femininity into something decadent, transgressive, and defiantly complex. 

Jouissance is new to the fragrance world—at only a few years old, the brand is younger than the time it takes for most natural fragrance materials to become ready for harvesting. And yet it is already beloved in both the U.K. and in niche perfume stores across the United States, with buzzy artistic collaborations with cultural tastemakers like writer Natasha Stagg and Susanna Davies-Crook of the Institute of Contemporary Art. Women and those with feminine tastes have responded to the brand with ardent celebration. 

I spoke to Cherry about her fragrance development process, her literary obsessions, and  perfume as a feminist practice and erotic art form.

I wanted to interview you, a perfumer, for Feeld, because how people smell has so much to do with the art of seduction and dating. Your scents are sexy without cliché or pandering. What does it mean to seduce somebody, and to be both vulnerable and interesting? What does transgression mean to you in terms of fragrance? 

It is a way to push the boundaries of tradition. There’s a traditional way to smell nice, but you can’t be afraid to experiment with elements that might be slightly displeasing. We started with a compass, a structure that’s classically feminine, but we twisted it in a way to give it more depth. 

The first fragrance we worked with was based on Pauline Réage’s The Story of O. O is a photographer taken by her boyfriend to train as a sex slave. I read the book many times and the film is so romantic and beautiful and edgy. I wanted to imagine what the character would smell like, because I wanted to smell like her. 

The opening notes are all the highs of desire, the orange flesh. You trace the body into a floral bouquet of roses and jasmine, geranium and violet. But we wanted to defile it, because she is not just a beautiful woman but she possesses a dark undercurrent. We added castoreum, and it is very theatrical, an unconventional and unsettling dimension. We wanted to start with something classically beautiful—and then defile it.

Another fragrance we did was inspired by Anaïs Nin and the first volume of her diary. It was inspired and contextualized by the perfume houses of the 1930s, when she lived—like Caron and Guerlain, which happened to be some of her favorite fragrances (Mitsuoko, for example)— as well as by 1950s Parisian films.  We added a touch of powder through the iris and then a human note—cumin. That was the finishing touch. A lot of people think cumin smells like body odor, so it’s not used very much in perfumery. People associate it with cooking. I had friends who commented that this fragrance smells like her vagina in a nice way. It was that tiny bit of cumin. We tried a version without it and it was wildly, wildly different. 

For me, this embodies what it is to be a little transgressive—it is something people can wear on a day-to-day [basis], but there is complexity that pushes the boundary of what is commonly accepted. 

I love that you referenced fragrances that Nin would have been wearing at the time of writing her diaries. Perfumers tend to pair very new, very modern fragrances with books of different eras entirely. It can feel ahistorical. Some perfume materials were not invented yet. They would not have been in her imagination. 

Doing that research was actually the fun part, because I love the history of perfumery. One of the first books to get me started was Barbara Herman’s incredible Scents and Subversion. When I decided to translate a certain work from a certain time period I had to do a deep dive into the iconic fragrances of the period. Fragrance transports you to a certain time. 

It’s in my collection, too, alongside a book called A Century of Scent. A lot of the most important fragrances of the past century don’t exist commercially anymore or are impossible to get. Fragrance is a moment of captured time, and it helps us understand other people’s impulses and desires when we smell it. It helps you understand context in a story. And I know you showcase stories not just in fragrance but in literature too. Jouissance publishes short story collections from authors like Natasha Stagg. When I see the names, I’m like, Of course. These are cool women. I’m wondering how you choose a writer to collaborate with and the qualities you’re looking for. So much of their work is sensual but not explicit.

The collected stories are a project between me and Sarah Cleaver. She runs the Zodiac Film Club and is a writer herself. She pitched the idea to me, and now she’s the editor of the project. Our fragrances are inspired by authors from an older generation, but we want to revive the legacy of iconic women authors and bridge them with the contemporary by tapping some of the most compelling voices of our generation. None of these writers are erotic writers by default, they work in different disciplines. They’re fiction writers, some of them [write] autofiction, some of them are essayists, and some of them are curators. 

We decided to work with writers who are not typically erotic writers because we were inspired by how the original writers approached the craft. Many had to write under pseudonyms and were known for different kinds of writing, because they didn’t want this kind of publication to tarnish their reputations as serious critics. Some of their work—their most well-known work—was published posthumously. We want to create a supportive environment for women to put their names to the truth about their desires. All of our writers took to the challenge brilliantly. 

There’s a confidence and declarative pose to all of their work. When I see it collectively it reminds me of a perfectly curated dinner party; they’d all be amazing hosts, because they’re smart, dynamic, and confident. The erotic doesn’t have to be explicit to be sexy. So much lies in the gesture or the foreplay before something is initiated. In fragrance, the implication is sexy. I’m thinking of the steel chain note in particular in La Bague D’O. Tell me about that. 

The steel chain is aldehydes, demystified, just a particular combination of them, because aldehydes smell metallic and we wanted the top note, the highest note, to be sharp. It represents an o-ring. In the film version, when she was in the chateau’s dungeon, she was shackled with steel chains. So we wanted to embody that smell and a flash of skin.

The translation of that visual is so clever. O-rings do even taste metallic and sharp. What a lot of women are drawn to about your brand is that it’s both deeply feminine and adult. A lot of brands creating perfumes for women tend to make us into candies or childlike or promise pseudoscience to distract men with; it can feel patronizing. 

Yes, and there are a lot of pheromone perfumes on the market. I tried some of them because I was curious. They’re basically just peach and vanilla. There are no pheromones in any of them. 

Yes, and they’re always promising groundbreaking scientific advancement that unlocks desire in strangers once you spray it on. They want to be the thing you put on to ensure a good date. Do you have a perfume for dates, specifically?

I was wearing Chanel Number 5 consistently. Of course, one guy said, You smell like my grandmother, but in a nice way. It was uncomfortable. But I’m quite lucky, I don’t have the cultural association of that perfume to grandmothers. I grew up in China and we had a limited selection of fragrances. Not even fragrances, really, but home sprays. It was a kind of Florida Water, a certain composition of rose and jasmine. Everyone wore that. Perhaps that is why I am fascinated with classical compositions; I don’t have a generational association tied to them. 

The difference in associations probably leads to more interesting pathways for formulation; you’re approaching things with a different understanding. Which does lead me to how you yourself learned perfumery. You’re the first private student of Antoine Lie, a classically trained perfumer behind some of the cultural heavyweights of the last century. What are some of the lessons he’s taught you, just out of curiosity? 

I actually wouldn’t dare call myself a perfumer yet even though I’ve been trained the past three years. I began learning at the very start of COVID and then went to the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, and after that started with Antoine. There’s been a lot of self study. I think there’s a big misconception about how we smell things. We think perfumers have this naturally heightened sense, that they can smell more than most. But learning from perfumers, I realized this is not the case. Most of them consider it a matter of training and practice on a daily basis. When you are learning perfumery, you are learning to memorize ingredients as a system of language that you then must recognize and categorize. Once you do this, you’re able to articulate your experiences. Most people may smell the same thing but they lack the language to describe what they’re smelling. For me, this was the most important lesson. It made me realize that anybody can learn with patience and daily practice. But it must be daily. You really do have to practice. 

Discipline is a kind of devotion. What did Simone Weil write? Attention is a form of prayer? Perfume is like a prayer to attention. Most people would love for it to be easy and magical. But it requires rigorous attention, because it is a craft. That’s marvelous. Thank you for sharing.