D.S. & Durga

D.S. & Durga was started in 2008 by David Seth Moltz, a touring musician with no formal perfumery training, and his wife Kavi Ahuja Moltz, an architect, who began making scents as gifts out of their Bushwick apartment. They bought a distiller to make their own citrus oils and worked from old Victorian handbooks on facial tonics and scent-making, building the brand by hand with friends who owned cafes and boutiques in Brooklyn that carried the early line. The name became associated with narrative-driven scents built around specific stories, landscapes and characters rather than conventional fragrance families. The brand grew from that DIY beginning into a recognized independent perfumery before being acquired in 2024 by Manzanita Capital, the London investment firm that also owns Diptyque and MALIN+GOETZ.