As this
singular formula dries down, I smell ritualistic hoodoo and hex muttered
over muddy, pine-crackling fire. You can almost feel smoke in your eyes as
prayers roll off tongues to gods and monsters. Underlying the intense verdant
smouldering is a pretty obsessive carnivorous hickory note, as if meat were
cooking somewhere, animal fats dropped into the fire. It’s a disconcerting
effect to say the least, a hint of sacrifice mixed with devout religious
observance. Like Norne by
Slumberhouse, D.S. & Durga’s Mississippi
Medicine is another very different and audacious assault on olfaction.
Deeply complex, symbolic and full of archaic wonder.
I really
love this quirky and erudite Brooklyn-based niche brand. Founded by the
graceful and modish husband and wife team of David and Kavi Moltz, D.S. &
Durga has established themselves as one of the most intriguing and innovative perfume
houses in recent years. David is the perfumer and creator of the houses
perceptive and atmospheric formulae. Kavi is the architect of the brand’s
design, bottles, packaging etc. But you get the impression reading interviews
with this gifted couple how symbiotic their relationship is and how much they
feed off each other’s artistic and creative processes.
David & Kavi Moltz
D.S.&
Durga is very much a house steeped in the romance of Americana and the beauty
of wordsmithery. I was drawn to the names of the fragrances and the sheer
beauty of the brand’s illustrations, bottles and artistic website. So much
consideration has been put into how the fragrances are perceived. When you
enter the D.S.& Durga world you participate in an lost history, one where
cowboys roam lazy dry plains, grass burns in the night, lonely fiddles drawl in
the darkness, fur-trappers haul beaver pelts, arrows fly, dresses snag in
Siberian snow and ritual incantations are muttered over mud and flame.
The
brand was founded in 2007 making small batches of scented produce for friends
and family. Indeed the boxes proudly proclaim small batch handmade olfactory tonics and aromatic formulations. There
is something calm and collected about the Moltzs, they have a strong sense of
self-belief and have managed to walk that somewhat difficult line between
personal indulgence and artistic expression with understated aplomb. The
creation of the fragrances involves huge amounts of research in raw materials,
influences and I think uniquely – atmosphere. There is a feel of painters and
sculptors at work. Images of David Moltz in his leather apron over crisp white
shirt, dipping his nose to vials, bottles and beakers against walls covered in
sketches, notes, paintings and swatches are more akin to snapshots of painters
working in lofts in the 70s and 80s. The scents reek of hidden passions and
obsessions. Drops of history and storytelling swirled into grasses, resins,
smoke and wild flowers. Names like Bowmakers,
Cowboy Grass, Burning Barbershop, Silent
Grove, Spent Musket Oil, Boston Ivy,
Siberian Snow and Freetrapper
instantly conjure up the most evocative scents capes.
I think
sometimes fragrance houses forget how powerful a name can be, how much of a psychological
pull it can exert on a potential wearer. Of course the juice matters, but
romancing and seducing your audience with thought-provoking and cinematic names
is something many brands neglect to their cost. David and Kavi Moltz have
thought long and hard about how to present their precious brand and it shows.
It oozes personality. There is a cool, must-have vibe to it, but not in an
irritating hipster way that seems to permeate so many small-scale operations. The
roots of the brand lie in 2007 Brooklyn as the US economy struggled with debt
and the shadows and collapses of large scale manufacturing processes. In
Brooklyn there was a resurgence of interest in all aspects of artisanal work,
pushing and developing craft skills to provide a quality product be it
skincare, scent, leather, furniture, glass or chocolate.
David
Moltz’s deep connection to the bones of fragrance go back to winning a bottle
of Pierre Cardin cologne in a summer camp raffle when he was a boy. There is
music in his blood and he moved in New York in 2002. Kavi studied architecture
in LA and design in Holland, but travelled extensively as a child. She met David
after returning to New York to start work as an architect. The brand started
privately, concocting formulae for friends, small batches of very precise
perfumes and colognes. This artisanal approach, in keeping with the ethos of
the time and their milieu was to inform everything they would do. Kavi realised
she could utilise her artistic and architectural skills to contain and design
the products the couple were producing. The bottles and packaging are very
distinctive utilising elegant lines, just the right amount of historical
reference and a simple strong clear flacon that highlights the delicate shades
of bottled juice.
