D.S. & Durga: Perfume Born from Brooklyn DIY Culture

“Perfume is armchair travel. Our scents are fragments of half-remembered myths and imagined landscapes, inviting exploration.”
— From the D.S. & Durga official website

Essential Information

Founded: 2008 (Brooklyn, New York)

Founders: David Seth Moltz (perfumer) and Kavi Ahuja Moltz (architect and designer)

Official website: https://www.dsanddurga.com/

The Founders and the Brand’s Origins

Their Backgrounds: Memories of the Sea and Flowers

David Seth Moltz grew up in a coastal town in Massachusetts. He says his earliest olfactory memories are the sea breeze that reached his home around two or three in the afternoon, the smoky woodland scent his cat brought in on winter nights, and the smell of lemon washing-up liquid. He says the smell of boat gasoline around a marina still means “coming home” to him.

Kavi Ahuja Moltz, meanwhile, was born and raised in New Jersey and spent every summer in India. Her olfactory memories are richer and more colourful: long jasmine garlands sold by street vendors during evening walks around India Gate in Delhi. Her grandmother would entwine them in her hair, then put them under her pillow on returning home and sleep enveloped in their scent all night. Roses and marigolds used at weddings. Tuberoses placed beside the bed every evening.

“India smells of burnt tires and flowers.”
— David Moltz

Then there is the smell of burning rubber that greets her every time she arrives in India, another memory of home for Kavi. Contrasting as they are, these are both olfactory experiences that vividly evoke a “place.”

Brooklyn’s DIY Years: “We Did Everything Ourselves”

The two met and fell in love in New York City. At the time, David was a musician pursuing music while working as a waiter in Brooklyn. Kavi was a young architect at an architectural practice. “I was working as a waiter and musician, and Kavi was working as an architect,” he recalls.

Brooklyn in the 2000s was a boiling point of DIY culture. Friends were making jewellery and leather shoes by hand, opening cafés, and launching brands of their own. In this environment, David became deeply drawn to herbs, plants, and spices.

“I became interested in the weeds growing out of the cracks in Brooklyn. On weekends we would go to second-hand bookshops together and find old herb books, books on Native American plant knowledge, and books about Elizabethan women making their own fragrances in stillrooms.”
— David Moltz

David began by making lotions, beer, and tonics by hand, and eventually moved on to perfume. His first creations were aftershave lotions as gifts for friends. When he realised none of his friends shaved, however, he changed direction to small-batch perfumes and colognes combining oils, resins, and plant extracts. His friends responded enthusiastically.

“I knew nothing about perfume. I knew nothing about the perfume business, or business itself. To be honest, I didn’t even understand what the word marketing meant.”
— David Moltz

It was then that Kavi said, “I’ll make the labels, so let’s turn it into a business.” And so, in 2008, their “little art project” got underway.

Starting from Zero: “We Really Knew Nothing”

Early production was literally done by hand. Kavi printed labels on the printer at her architecture office, cut them out one by one with an X-Acto knife, and stuck them onto bottles. It was such a small beginning that they felt bewildered simply on being told the minimum bottle order was 100.

At first, David disliked the very word “brand.”

“Ten years ago, the word brand sounded to me like a dirty corporate-boardroom word. I felt it couldn’t accurately describe the way we worked.”
— Kavi Moltz

Even so, they gradually reinvested their sales revenue and grew the team little by little. “One person helped with shipping, and then an employee called Sarah joined us who had experience working in an actual company. She’s still part of the company today,” David says.

Around 2015–2016, when the packaging underwent a major redesign, the brand began selling through Barneys New York, later expanding to Bergdorf Goodman, Liberty London, and other retailers. This could be described as the period when what David calls “the real D.S. & Durga” emerged into the world.

Film School, Music, and Then Perfume

Before finding his way to perfume, David was already a versatile “world-maker.” Raised in a musical family, he says that in third or fourth grade he played a yellow plastic toy in a death-metal band called Satan’s Little Helpers. After film school, he worked as a musician and toured with a signed band. He still makes music today.

Kavi studied art history before turning to architecture. She earned a master’s degree at SCI-Arc, an arts-oriented graduate architecture school. After working in an architectural practice, she discovered the reality that “I thought I was going into a creative career, but in an actual architecture office, you can’t do truly creative work until you reach the top.” The D.S. & Durga project was also a way out of that sense of confinement.

“D.S.” stands for David Seth, while “Durga” comes from David’s pet name for his wife, Kavi. Durga is a Sanskrit name for a Hindu goddess, a powerful figure symbolising protection, strength, motherhood, destruction, and war. Combining their two names, the brand name is inscribed with the founding couple’s lives themselves.

What Defines the Brand

A Philosophy of Scent: “Small Things Point to Bigger Things”

D.S. & Durga’s fragrances do not pursue only what is conventionally thought of as “a nice smell.” David says:

“I always feel an urge to create. It’s an attempt to enter the slipstream of all artists. I’m constantly writing music, writing poetry, and making fragrances.”
— David Moltz

Fragrance concepts begin with David’s list of ideas, which he is constantly adding to in notes on his smartphone. A name or concept often comes first, and his approach is to realise it in scent. The words David returns to repeatedly are “restraint” and “curation.”

“The more you strip away what is unnecessary, the stronger the finished work becomes. You have to discard all the ideas you initially wanted to express and get to the essence. That takes the courage to let go of your attachment to the original idea, and a great deal of restraint.”
— David Moltz

David also experiences scents synaesthetically as “colours,” a sensitivity that contributes to the individuality of his perfumery. Vetiver, for example, is a straw-like yellow, while patchouli is deep red: for him, scent is also colour.

Musicality is deeply rooted in the brand too. Each perfume comes with a detailed story and poetic description, which David likens to a record’s liner notes:

“Like a record, you can listen and delve into the liner notes. Every box contains descriptions, notes, stories, and anecdotes about the perfume inside.”
— David Moltz

Packaging Design: “A Love of Transparency”

Kavi handles all the visual design. Her designs, shaped by an architectural perspective, are grounded in minimalism.

“Our packaging plays with light, shadow, and depth. It was influenced by my years as an architect. Inspired by the language of architecture, I created little houses for these perfumes.”
— Kavi Moltz

The bottle’s thick, clear glass and window-like cutouts take inspiration from Dadaist collage. “We are very interested in transparency,” Kavi says. While using matte white paper, she makes the most of accent colours, and the limited-edition Studio Juices, discussed below, allow for more colourful, playful expression. There is also a commitment to sustainability: the packaging is made entirely of paper, with no foam used to hold the glass in place.

In 2015–2016, the packaging was redesigned from its previous handmade, nineteenth-century-nostalgic look into its current clean, modern form. “Until then, we had been pretending to live in the nineteenth century. At some point, that spell suddenly broke: we could simply make the world we wanted to create now,” the two recall.

Store Design: Concrete as a Shared Language

Concrete is a common material running through D.S. & Durga’s stores.

“Concrete is a material that has always inspired me. It has weight and monumentality. You can give it form and texture. I instinctively felt it would become a common thread running through all the stores.”
— Kavi Moltz

All three current stores are designed around this philosophy: the Nolita flagship in Manhattan; the Williamsburg store in Brooklyn, co-designed with Kavi’s friend since high school, Krista Ninivaggi, and characterised by layered concrete walls and a cast-in-place concrete counter; and the West Coast flagship in Venice Beach, California. The latter is designed as an homage to the Elrod House, created by architect John Lautner in 1968.

The Fragrance Lineup

D.S. & Durga’s fragrances consistently form a strongly narrative lineup inspired by “imagined landscapes” and “historical stories.” Here are some representative creations and collections.

The Regular Line: OGs from the Earliest Days

Cowboy Grass is an emblematic creation that has been part of the brand since its founding. Centred on American sagebrush, white thyme, and prairie switchgrass, it is characterised by clary sage’s “whitish green, fresh, and powerful” scent. The copy on the brand’s official website is playful too: “Perfect for robbing a bank on horseback.”

Burning Barbershop also dates from the earliest lineup and is known as a fougère-style barbershop fragrance.

Radio Bombay puts sandalwood in the spotlight, imagining a transistor radio made of sandalwood playing ragas in the heat of Bombay, now Mumbai. David explains:

“When my guitar amp gets hot after intense playing, the back of the amp gives off a hot, dusty, metallic, greasy smell. I realised it resembled the scent of sandalwood essential oil. Real sandalwood essential oil is perfect. I often wear it on its own.”
— David Moltz

Its top notes are radiant wood, copper, and cedar; its heart is sandalwood, radiant iris, and boronia; and its base is balsam fir absolute, coconut musk, and ambergris.

Rose Atlantic centres on the salty sea breeze of America’s East Coast and sun-ripened rosehips. White Peacock Lily combines lily, oleander, alabaster violet, and vanilla. These three creations represent the “rebranding period” of 2015–2016.

Iconic Story-Driven Fragrances

Bowmakers was inspired by an actual violin-maker’s workshop in Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley. David explains that notes of violin varnish, mahogany, aged walnut, amber pine rosin, and cedar overlap to recreate the atmosphere of a nineteenth-century workshop. The top notes are violin varnish, mahogany, and an outdoor accord; the heart is amber pine rosin, maplewood, and cypress; and the base is spiced tree resin, moss, and cedar.

Debaser was inspired by the Pixies’ 1989 song “Debaser.” Indie rock playing on college radio in the damp heat of August: it captures that summer memory in scent. Fig, bergamot, pear, coconut milk, iris, and tonka bean form its structure.

Jazmin Yucatan grew out of a family trip to the Yucatán Peninsula: underwater caves, or cenotes, sunk into the jungle; limestone; passion flowers growing beside the road; and wild jasmine. David himself says, “It has already become one of this year’s bestsellers.”

An Innovative Experiment: I Don’t Know What

One of the brand’s global bestsellers is I Don’t Know What, or IDKW. This “fragrance enhancer” translates the French expression “je ne sais quoi,” an indefinable charm, directly into scent. It is designed as a tool to make other fragrances shine more brightly when layered with them.

“It’s like leaving only the structure of a building, without the interior. You can fill the inside yourself with the oils or scents you like.”
— David Moltz

It can also be worn on its own, but the concept has been widely recognised as a fresh approach within the fragrance industry and was selected for Liberty London’s Beauty Hall of Fame.

Studio Juices: Handmade Experiments Limited to 50 Bottles

Studio Juices is a handmade fragrance series released every few months in editions of just 50 bottles. David composes the scents, while Kavi creates entirely different, colourful, artistic visuals each time. The series is a platform for experiments that would be difficult to realise in the regular line, and Kavi calls it “a chance to operate like a micro-brand.”

The Candle Line: “The Smell of Invisible Cities”

The candle line is also worth exploring. Concrete After Lightning recreates “that sensation of how New York smells after rain in August,” with notes of street weeds, steam, and cement. Big Sur After the Rain features eucalyptus, soaked earth, and ocean. The titles alone bring landscapes to life, showcasing D.S. & Durga’s characteristic philosophy of naming.

Collaborations

D.S. & Durga has undertaken several notable collaborations.

In 2018, to commemorate Duran Duran’s fortieth anniversary, the band approached the Brooklyn niche fragrance house, resulting in four limited-edition fragrances: Come Undone, Hungry Like the Wolf, Skin Divers, and You Kill Me With Silence. All were roll-on perfume oils released exclusively at Liberty London, interpreting the lyrics and imagery of each song through scent.

“I insisted on including this eighties song in the list. The fragrance is animalic and captures scenes from the music video: the market, the jungle at night. It’s hairy, wolf-like, and wild.”
— David Moltz (on Hungry Like the Wolf)

Of his collaboration with beauty expert Linda Rodin, David says, “She really knew what she wanted. She would bring a bottle and say, ‘Something like this,’ and I would recreate it. It was very easy to work that way.” For a collaboration with Levi’s, he reportedly smelled the actual jacket Einstein loved to wear and recreated its scent.

A New Phase for the Brand: Investment from Manzanita Capital

In January 2024, London-based private equity firm Manzanita Capital acquired a majority stake in D.S. & Durga. Terms were not disclosed. Manzanita is a fragrance-focused investor that already owns brands including Diptyque (in Japanese), Malin+Goetz, and Space NK.

Kavi describes the decision this way:

“Manzanita Capital respects our work as creators and wants us to keep doing what we do best. We want to begin international expansion in earnest. They are based in Britain and have more connections and distribution partnerships.”
— Kavi Ahuja Moltz

David and Kavi remain with the brand as creative leaders. Monogram Capital Partners, which first invested in 2018, also continues as a minority shareholder.

Incidentally…

• David is a musician who has played many instruments and performed in bands since his youth, and still writes new music today. When he says “perfume is an extension of the same creativity as music,” it is not a metaphor but a literal expression of his experience.
• Kavi says that the first music she puts on every morning when doing creative work is the Jesus and Mary Chain’s album Darklands: “It really calms me down.”
• The names David cites as creative influences range widely: Paramahansa Yogananda, Gustav Mahler, Thomas Mann, Malevich, Muddy Waters, Mary Oliver, Dylan, Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Yeats, and Chinese poets.
• David has a distinctive poetic language, describing I Don’t Know What as “only the structure of a building, with no interior.” This approach also connects to the core of his fragrance-making philosophy: “small things point to bigger things.”