Carlota Joia

Design - Off Road

Neptusse — Sem Kigila

Growing up between Spanish and Angolan cultures awakened a deep curiosity for creativity, spirituality, and fashion, alongside a fascination with biology, understanding the body, and the different ways we connect with it. Over time, this evolved into a desire to explore how design can become a form of care and create meaningful impact through products and fashion. Questions around identity, femininity, wellbeing, and emotional connection gradually became central to this exploration.

Neptusse, Sem Kigila emerged from a reflection on an often overlooked reality: menstrual poverty. While conversations around poverty and barriers affecting daily life continue to grow, menstruation often remains invisible despite affecting millions of people worldwide. The project asks how design can contribute to making menstrual care more accessible while preserving dignity, beauty, and emotional connection.

Developed as a menstrual underwear system for women in rural Angola and South Africa, the project explores how protection, comfort, dignity, and beauty can coexist within an intimate product. It questions the idea that solutions created from necessity should sacrifice aesthetics, emotional connection, or self-expression.

With this project, Carlota Joia’s mission is to contribute to a future where menstrual wellbeing is treated as a right rather than a privilege. Because beauty, in this case, is not a luxury, it is dignity. And our bodies deserve to be honoured, celebrated, and embraced as our own muses.

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