Perfume review - DS & Durga Black Magenta, Big Sur Eucalyptus and Deep Dark Vanilla - David Seth Moltz; 2023/2024

Rightly or wrongly, most perfumery output is still measured against the standards and aesthetics of French styles. If a scent is considered not to ‘work’ in some way, or perhaps not even to be a perfume at all, this is often because it doesn’t conform to the broad personality determined and perpetuated over the decades by French and French-leaning perfumery schools. Even high-profile ‘American’ scents — for instance, the Lauders, Calvin Kleins and Ralph Laurens — are put together by creators whose skills have been honed by the French tradition. So when someone tries to break into the fragrance scene from outside this world, they’ve got their work cut out for them, because not only do they tend not to have the training that would compel them to make scents of this type — more often than not, they’re not especially interested in receiving such training — but they also have to prove to critics and potential customers that their style could and should legitimately be seen as an alternative form of perfumery. 

Sometimes, these rule-breakers manage to attract sufficient attention to themselves and earn some success. Cue: DS & Durga, who have been winning the hearts of millennials and, one presumes, Gen Z-ers as well, since they started releasing scents in 2008. Co-founded by Kavi and David Seth Moltz all their works have so far been composed by the latter, who started making perfumes by playing around with materials he managed to obtain from the likes of Robertet. What he lacks in formal training he more than makes up for with chutzpah and individualism, releasing an astonishing — some would say excessive — number of new works every year.