DON'T MISS A THING

Few pieces in KOKET’s collection carry as much of founder Janet Morais’s feminine vision as the Temptation. Its sculptural, hip-curved base became one of her most personal designs — and, years later, the foundation for Her Temptation, the customizable icon now opening its doors to women artists around the world. Here, Janet talks through it all: why the shape, how it was built, and where she’s taking it next.

WHY THE HIP BONE

“I have always been fascinated by the way a woman’s body can communicate without saying a word,” Janet says. “The hip has movement, confidence, and attitude. It can be soft and feminine, yet incredibly powerful.”

For her, the hip is one of the most seductive lines of the female form — but what draws her in most is its duality. “The hips can provoke desire, yet they are also a symbol of extraordinary strength,” she says. “During pregnancy, they support a woman’s changing body, while the pelvis prepares for the incredible act of bringing life into the world. I find that incredibly beautiful and sensual — the same curve that seduces is also connected to creation, motherhood, strength, and transformation.”

That duality became the entire point of the piece. “That is what I wanted to capture in the Temptation. I wasn’t simply recreating the shape of a woman; I wanted to capture everything that shape represents — her sensuality, her confidence, her strength, her ability to create, and her unapologetic femininity. The female hip is temptation and creation in the same beautiful curve. To me, there is nothing more sensual or more powerful than that.”

BRINGING THE CURVE TO LIFE

Turning that idea into a piece of furniture meant convincing her own craftsmen it was possible. “I didn’t want to design a piece that simply referenced a woman’s body,” Janet says. “I wanted you to feel the woman in it — the sensuality, the curves, the confidence and strength.”

“I remember going to our craftsmen in Portugal and explaining that I wanted the base to resemble the female hip bone. I was describing the pelvis, the curvature, how it needed to feel feminine and sensual but still have strength and structure. Our master carver looked at me as though I was completely nuts.”

She didn’t let it go. “I kept saying, ‘No, look at the hip. Look at the way it curves. That is the shape.’ We went back and forth, sketching, carving, and refining. It couldn’t be too literal. I never wanted it to look anatomical. It needed to capture the gesture of the female body — the sweep of the hip, the suggestion of a waist, that beautiful tension between softness and strength.”

It’s a process she credits entirely to collaboration. “That is where working with master craftsmen becomes so important to my design process. I can come to them with an emotion, an idea, or something completely unconventional, and through their hands we begin to give it life.” Eventually, she says, the same carver who thought she was crazy could see exactly what she’d been seeing. “And that carved base became the soul of Temptation.”

ONE SILHOUETTE, INFINITE STORIES

That soul is what Her Temptation lets you make your own. Her Temptation invites you to make KOKET’s most iconic cabinet your own — choosing your own finishes, doors, and hardware on the same sculptural base born from that hip-curve idea. For Janet, this same open invitation has become part of something larger: as an extension of her mission to celebrate women and preserve craftsmanship, she’s personally inviting select women artists and craftspeople around the world to take that same canvas and make it entirely their own.

“I began looking at the cabinet and thinking: What if the body remained KOKET, but we gave another woman the opportunity to tell her story through it?” Janet says. That’s exactly what these invitations are about: rather than leaving personalization open to chance, Janet handpicks women artists and craftspeople from around the world and asks them to reinterpret the piece as an act of pure creative expression — their technique, their culture, their story, given full reign over KOKET’s most iconic form.

Here’s how it works. The base stays the same — that unmistakable, sculptural Temptation form. But the doors and top become a canvas, handed to an artist or craftsperson whose work Janet admires, with almost no direction attached.

“I don’t want to tell them what to create. That would defeat the purpose.” Painters, sculptors, marquetry artisans, textile and jewelry artists — whatever the medium, Janet asks each one to bring their own technique, culture, and history to the piece. “I want to give them a canvas,” she says, “and make it unmistakably theirs.”

From there, the work becomes a true collaboration with KOKET’s own ateliers. “Our master craftsmen then work with each artist to translate her vision into a collectible piece while protecting the integrity of her craft and artistic expression,” Janet explains — the same Portuguese hands behind the original Temptation base now in service of someone else’s story.

There’s a quiet symbolism in keeping that base constant. “Anatomically, as women, we share the same fundamental form,” Janet says. “But what makes each of us unique is what cannot be seen in our anatomy — our minds, our experiences, our memories, our cultures, our passions and the lives we have lived.” Every Her Temptation begins from the same feminine foundation. What rises above it is entirely, individually hers — which is also where each piece gets its name: Her Temptation becomes herTemptation.

A PLATFORM, SHARED ON PURPOSE

For Janet, the project is as much about who gets the spotlight as what gets built. KOKET has spent years building an international audience through the brand and through Love Happens Magazine — and she’s using that reach deliberately.

“I want to use that platform to celebrate other extraordinary creatives and introduce their work to audiences who may never have discovered them otherwise.” As she puts it: “Empowerment cannot simply be something written in a mission statement. You have to create the stage — and then be willing to share it.”

Janet’s own contribution sets the tone. Her Temptation is wrapped in feathers — a treatment called Folie, on view at Da Terra’s Dubai showroom, where design-savvy readers may already have spotted it. The piece is one-of-a-kind and available for acquisition — a rare chance for one collector in the Middle East to own this particular expression of Janet’s own story. “Folie means madness, and I have always considered my approach to life to be à la folie — with passion, intensity, perhaps a little madness,” she says. “I often say, ‘Je t’aime à la folie’—I love you madly. That is how I love, how I create, and quite honestly, how I live.”

Feathers have long been a signature in her work. “My designs for KOKET have always been deeply inspired by flora and fauna,” she says, “but feathers have always been my absolute passion” — delicate yet enduring, sensual yet almost weightless, and always, symbolically, about flight. “Feathers remind me to live with lightness, but never without passion. To keep moving, evolving, and flying toward my dreams—no matter how impossible they may appear.”

“So Janet’s Temptation could really only be Folie,” she says. “It is sensual, a little wild, unapologetically feminine, and perhaps slightly mad. But then again, I have always believed the most extraordinary things in life require a little folie.”

WHAT SHE’S LOOKING FOR NEXT

Janet is now seeking artists and craftspeople worldwide — with a particular pull toward techniques passed down through generations and endangered by time. She names straw marquetry, wood marquetry, extraordinary natural stone from Brazil, intricate Asian embroidery, Indian beading, sculptural metalwork, porcelain artistry, and other rare decorative arts as traditions she’d love to see reinterpreted through the Temptation form.

“What excites me is discovering a craft that belongs to a particular culture, place or tradition and then asking the artist, ‘What does your Temptation look like?'” She’s especially drawn to work that requires the human hand — “patience, knowledge and an intimacy with the material that simply cannot be replicated by a machine.”

The ambition is a genuinely international collection: one silhouette traveling the world, becoming a different canvas in every culture it touches. “One woman may tell her story through thousands of hand-applied beads. Another through precisely cut pieces of wood or straw. Another through hand-painted porcelain or metal shaped and sculpted by hand. And another may allow the natural veining of an extraordinary stone to become the artwork itself.”

A LEGACY TOLD THROUGH CRAFT

Beyond the celebration of women, Janet sees the project as an act of preservation. “Some of the most beautiful techniques in the world are disappearing, and I want Her Temptation to give those crafts a new canvas and introduce them to a new generation of collectors.”

She envisions Her Temptation eventually becoming a living archive — a private KOKET collection that doubles as a record of rare craftsmanship and the women behind it. But the bigger hope is more personal than institutional.

“Years from now, I want someone to look at the collection and see much more than beautiful furniture,” she says. “I want them to see a portrait of women around the world at this moment in time — their creativity, their heritage, their individuality and the extraordinary things their hands and minds are capable of creating.

“That, for me, would be the greatest accomplishment: a legacy of women told through craft.”

Artists and craftspeople interested in contributing to Her Temptation can email anna@bykoket.com.

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