Bracing cologne on the Gold Coast.

A bracing cologne of coastal Italian citrus rinds-chinotto, blood orange, cold-pressed lemon and green  mandarin with ambrette seed & clean musk.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

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Italian party time
Liner Notes

There are many variations on cologne. The original Italian, French, German, and Hungarian recipes usually call for citrus (lemon, bergamot, etc.), herbs (lavender, rosemary) and neroli (orange blossom distillate). The scent is instantly recognizable. Most classic colognes are very pleasant. Every day wearing for that out-of-the-shower scent. With varying degrees, they often do not last. Eau de cologne technically refers to the low amount of fragrance oil in the final product. They aren’t traditionally built to last. Our Italian citrus varies the formula in a few ways to create a fresh citrus scent where the citrus actually last into the dry-down. Firstly, the citrus pallet is wide. We use five distinct coastal Italian fruits in a certain proportion to create a bright beginning. There is the most Italian of fruits – Bergamot, lightened with the even fresher, yellow amalfi lemon, the oceanic select red mandarin distillate (with its peculiar clam note), sweet red blood orange, and bitter orange chinotto peel. This is the accord that I want to take all the way down to the base. Instead of the herbs of classic colognes, we use violet ionones to keep the sweet going south. In the base the liquid crystal smell of copaiba balsam, a white resin from South America, blends with incense absolute, and oakmoss. This gives an after thought of citrus. Copaiba for the fresh peppery bergamot, incense for the orange-lemon notes, and oakmoss for the green. Overall Italian Citrus is lush and lasting. The Italian coast is special for more than its citrus. It is a carefree place, where the scenery humbles all who see it. Endless roads climb and wind above the shimmer of the Mediterranean. Secret spots abound. Food, conversation, relaxation. Old classic cars. White suits. Colorful ties and dresses. Beautiful people. It’s always nice to spray something and remember places where life is bright.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), evernia prunastri extract, citral,  geraniol,  linalool, eugenol

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D.S. & DURGA was founded by an architect and a musician. As pioneers in DIY Brooklyn, we started from scratch and did it our way (more Sid than Sinatra). We began by turning things we loved into scented stories of cowboys, open terrain, Russian novel characters, and folk songs. A perfume is a world you can return to

D.S. & Durga

Italian Citrus

Size

Perfume

Rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1.

Rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1. Young green shoots, long spears, russet underbrush. The essential oils of our Big Sur After Rain fragrance added to an 80% alcohol based sanitizer with softening glycerin.
Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

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California Dreamin’
Liner Notes

For breathtaking American vistas, I think Big Sur hovers somewhere at the top of the list. The river running down through the mountains hits the fog covered sea. Sunsets over the pacific are next level. You can feel the magnetic pull of Asia on the other side of the vast water. As you drive down highway 1 - top down, motorway music, the winds whipping - your car bends around each corner discovering a new jaw dropping bridge, private beach, or sonorous mountain. Poets and mystics populate the magic place. And the flora of the California coast is extremely varied. By Big Sur, you have a wonderful micro climate from the heat and the fog. Redwoods and other conifers hide groves off the side of the road. Eucalyptus abounds. But it doesn’t yet smell medicinal like when you encounter the oil in a sauna. It is still thick with green shoots saturated with their perfumed freshness. The long spears of the Eucalyptus dart out from the branch, eventually falling to the floor creating a dry russet underbrush. When it rains, the earth is soaked and the scent of the eucalyptus combines with the fog to make an almost natural medicine lodge. Through the cracks in the trees you can see the sweeping waves.
Ingredients

Active ingredients: ETHYL ALCOHOL 80% V/V Inactive ingredients: purified water, isopropyl myristate, glycerine, fragrance, acrylates copolymer (carbomer), silver (7440-22-4)

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Big Sur After Rain Spray Hand Sanitizer

Hand Lotion & Cream

Take it anywhere.

To make it smell like you have a fireplace, especially when you don’t have a fireplace.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

Fireside songs
Liner Notes

Nothing is cozier than a fireplace. The hearth brings us back to that ancient desire for warmth. The smell of a fireplace alone makes us think of the country, the holidays, the joys of cooler weather. Family gatherings, reading, romance, old world – associations are plentiful. In the speed of the modern world, especially in the city, it is rarer to have a working fireplace – or to take the time to light a fire. It’s a commitment. So we created the candle to give you the scent and feeling of a having a gentle fire roaring wherever you may be. It took a while to get the wood mix right; we use a particular blend of cedar, pine, and oak and add cade and birch for smoke and ash.

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Portable Fireplace

Home Fragrance

Violins and bows in the tiny towns of the Pioneer Valley.

Amid the transcendental woods of the 1800s, craftsmen from the Massachusetts Bay Colony built violins and bows. Old growth mahogany, burled maple shavings, amber pine rosin, aged walnut and unique secret varnishes.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

The flowering of American music
Liner Notes

Something magic lurks in the New England woods. They have been the stomping ground of natives, Vikings, poets, hermits, and dreamers for centuries. Wooded areas represent that which lies just beyond our door but is secret and hidden, both scary and inviting. Many of our great dramas center upon the forest. For Thoreau and Emerson, it was the Massachusetts woods. They extend from the outskirts of Boston to the wilderness of Western MA. All that is civilized peters out as one goes beyond the pale of University life. The great thinkers of our early nation had their muse right beside them. Emerson’s musings are peppered with the Massachusetts forest, and Thoreau conducted his great experiment right in them. New England is characterized by a juxtaposition of the quaint and the grand. Like the lands of New England’s ancestors (English, Irish, Scottish), the mountains are not gigantic, but they are majestic. There are no Himalayas, Rockies, great lakes, deep trenches. Yet entire folk histories inhabit the cracks and crevices of the land. Caves are gateways to lairs of sorcerers. Valleys are watched over by protecting gods. The scale may be quaint, but the lands implied beyond are infinite. Emerson has all he needs in the country lands around him. Magic is not something that lays far off in a distant realm. The seemingly mundane space between trees holds more if one cares to look there. This magic pervades all that he writes. The artist jumps in the river of creation. He or she mimics the Creator and freely follows inspiration. All around us are glimpses. Small pieces of land – yards, thickets, gardens, rooftops – where we are reminded of the greater world beyond the everyday. We do not need to travel to the wilderness to feel the endless space inside our minds. The magic of the Massachusetts forest in the pioneer valley gave America something tangible as well – wood for among other things, musical instruments. Until the early 19th century, our young nation naturally relied upon imports for many items, including instruments. Even the music we made was influenced by Europe. All that began to change in the violin shops of the Pioneer valley. In them our first American instruments were created. Were they the tools we needed to go on and create our own lexicon in music? Of course they were just a part of it. But I love to think that the distilled magic of our maple, oak, pine, and rosin went to open up the minds of American musicians. Over the course of the next couple hundred years, Americans were making world-class music. Perhaps our greatest gifts: jazz, blues, country, folk, rock’n’roll, hip hop, and some of the most forward thinking classical music in the 20th century. Bowmakers is supposed to recall the opening of a violin case. There is the warm shellac of rosin and the luxuriance of mahogany and burled maple. It is a woody scent. The cold snap of birch in the whistling winter wind floats above the heart. The forest floor, slightly damp and blackened, pads out the bass (ha!) of the fragrance. Some will view it as masculine. It is rich and forward, but could be worn by anyone.
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), citral, eugenol benzyl benzoate, benzyl cinnamate, geraniol, citral
Pocket Perfume Ingredients

Fractionated coconut oil, isopropyl myristate, parfum (fragrance), citral, eugenol benzyl benzoate, benzyl cinnamate, geraniol

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Bowmakers

The wild shrill of Black Francis coming through the radio in the August heat.

The wild shrill of Black Francis coming through the radio in the August heat. Ripe fig, iris, coconut milk, tonka and dry blond woods.
Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Our top Pixies cuts.
Liner Notes

Music is essential to life. I was born in a house of blues – dad’s from Chicago. At 9 I went to camp on an island. Cool older punk kids showed me the Misfits and the Pixies. (One of those kids was actually comedian Rob Delaney). That summer was ruled by Doolittle. The provocative lyrics. The cackle of Frank Black. I absorbed it in the summer heat. August humidity. Young romance. Our Debaser scent is hot, humid, sexy. Green stems, deep purple fig, soft blond woods, a wet white ethereal musk, and the coumarin-vanillic note of tonka bean.
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), coumarin, hydroxyisohexyl-3-cyclohexene-carboxaldehyde, benzyl salicylate, citralPocket Perfume Ingredients
Fractionated coconut oil, isopropyl myristate, parfum (fragrance), coumarin, hydroxyisohexyl-3-cyclohexe, e-carboxaldehyde, benzyl salicylate, citral

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Debaser

Electric crackle, downpour, panic grass, sizzling asphalt steam.

Electric crackle, downpour, panic grass, sizzling asphalt steam. Respite on muggy summer days.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

Hot city jams
Liner Notes

The scent after it rains is a favorite aromatic genre of mine – and many people as it turns out. Perfumers have a few tools to use in the category of ozone – or things that smell like water and air. Geosmin is the scent molecule released from bacteria in dirt after it rains. What’s lovely, is that the Geosmin blends with different aromatics in different environments. Whereas in the forest it smells dank yet fresh, in the city you get the scent of hot asphalt and concrete quickly cooled by rain. It is as if the whole city is boiling, overlapping in scent, and when rain and thunder come, all is released into the air in an instant. It smells fresh, unique and only of summer in the city. Concrete After Lightning is simple – you have the air, rain, steam, and some of the weeds that grow in the cracks of New York City.

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Concrete After Lightning

Spritzers aboard the famous Salt Spray Rose.

Spritzers aboard the famous Salt Spray Rose. Sinatra’s summer wind, dunegrass in the distance, rosehip, the white lighthouse.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

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Ultimate summer-by-the-sea mix
Liner Notes

There is no place I’d rather be in the summer than by the ocean in New England. Marblehead, Maine, Phillips Beach in Swampscott, Nantucket…to name a few. It’s hot but the sea breeze brings in cool salted air by the late afternoon. The cloudless sky looks east over the Atlantic. Seagulls hang high over cutters, Sloops, and Scoonahs (real spelling Schooner). The borders of the beachhead are covered in bushes of single petaled rosa rugosa. The musk rose. So fresh and purple fruity in the summer sun. By late summer the rose hips are bright tomato red. They are sour and filled with seeds. They hang heavy over the shiny deep green leaves. Honeysuckle, black raspberry, and other vines intertwine amongst the dune grass. There is so much music associated with this time of year. Summer jams. Soul music. The sweet syrup of Sam Cooke, the gruff scrawl of Otis. Doo-wop. And the dinky organ of Sinatra’s “Summer Wind.” I went to day camp on an island. Every morning we boarded a ferryboat with 2 floors (The Hannah Glover). We sang songs the whole way out. On the way home, they would blast “The Summer Wind” and everyone would belt out the words. “MY FICKLE FRIEND!” was the height. This scent isn’t just a rose. It has the ocean, delicate petals, the green stem, the waxy leaves, and the fresh idyllic powder of summertime. It is an everyday perfume.
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl salicylate, limonene, benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, benzyl cinnamate, butylphenyl methylpropional, cinnamal, cinnamyl alcohol, citronellol, farnesol, geraniol, hydroxyisohexyl 3 cyclohexene carboxaldehyde , eugenol, isoeugenol, linalool

Pocket Perfume Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), alpha-isomethyl ionone, benzyl alcohol, benzl benzoate, benzyl salicylate, citral, citro- nellol, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, isoeugenol, limonene, linalool

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Rose Atlantic

Jungle, humidity, snake plants, jazmín yucateco

Jungle, humidity, snake plants, jazmín yucateco, crocodile by the cenote, shaded temple, limestone ruins. D.S. & DURGA x Opening Ceremony *Limited Edition*
Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Una fiesta Yucateca
Liner Notes

Entering the interior of the Yucatan peninsula seems like a journey inwards.  The vast beauty of coast is far behind. The long roads stretch on through dense jungle to the horizon. One moves towards sacred ground where advanced civilizations built massive monuments to the Gods. Once-thriving cities are preserved in russet orange limestone ruins. Overgrown green vines and dark grasses swallow temples back into the jungle. Fruits hang heavy in the foliage like the humid air of the Yucatan–redolent of jungle flowers. Crocodiles hunt in the cool waters of cenotes. Natives burn copal resin-used for hundreds of years or more, it reminds us of holy ceremonies. The jasmine plants speak of animalic powder, a shocking complex aroma–like spotting the pattern of a jaguar among a monotony of green vegetation.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, benzyl cinnamate, benzyl salicylate, cinnamyl alcohol, citral, citronellol, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, isoeugenol, limonene, linalool

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Jazmín Yucatan

A fragrance enhancer with transparent radiance.

A fragrance enhancer with transparent radiance that gives any perfume a certain, as the French say, “I don’t know what.”

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

C'est dope.
Liner Notes

I Don’t Know What is a wonderful tool for anyone who wants to play around with perfume. Of course it can be worn as a modern wonderfully transparent aroma, but it can also be layered over anything. Often when I leave the house, I will wear a touch of sandalwood, rose, jasmine, patchouli, oud, etc. These oils are lovely but can be muddy and they don’t last more than a few hours. IDKW sprayed over them makes the oil into a PERFUME. It does this because it is made with no notes! It is a secret combination of materials that perfumers use to highlight and enhance notes in a perfume. A Bergamot accord announces freshness, Vetiver Acetate a thin amber, Firsantol a lingering sandalwood, Iso E Super a radiance, and so on. It is like a building with only structure – no interior. You can fill in the interior with an oil, a scent you like, even an old scent that has lost its way. IDKW is built to layer and enhance everything else it touches.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), alpha-isomethyl ionone, benzyl alcohol, benzl benzoate, benzyl salicylate, citral, citro- nellol, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, isoeugenol, limonene, linalool

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I Don't Know What

Sublime Indonesian oud with a worldwide perspective.

Sublime Indonesian oud with a worldwide perspective. Formulated in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn with North African papyrus, Afghani saffron, and Bulgarian rose.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

BK to the Middle East
Liner Notes

Oud is the most notorious ingredient in perfume. Everyone seems to have an opinion about it. Real oud oil is the most expensive perfume ingredient on the planet. Rare logs from the jungles of South East Asia are guarded by the government – theft penalized by death! Whole logs of Aquilaria that have been infected with the black resin can sell for millions. Oud is the stuff of fables - now endangered from overharvesting.
Aromatically, oud is among the most varied and complex oils on the planet. Depending on location, age, and method of extraction oud can display countless shimmering effects that appear at once woody, spicy, floral, smoky, rooty, musky, fine, fecal, and animalic. The hunt for rare ouds to be prized and worn directly on the skin is a little different than the making oud perfumes.
Oud perfume, like most modern perfumes, seek to take inspiration from studies of oils that could never be mass produced (for regulatory, environmental, artistic and economic considerations). The magic of the perfumer’s touch is his or her ability to reconstruct specific aromas with other materials.
Notorious Oud is me sitting in Brooklyn, thinking about a rare Indonesian Oud that I procured. Thinking what would make its essence sing and grow from a single oil into a transcendent perfume. I took fine materials from all over the world – Bulgarian Rose, French Lavender, Egyptian Papyrus, and Afghani saffron—and built a support structure around this wonderfully complex oud accord. Oud that wears easy and beautiful.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, cinnamal, cinnamyl alcohol, citral, citronellol, coumarin, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, limonene, linalool

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Notorious Oud

For robbing banks on horseback.

American sagebrush, flowering white thyme, and prairie switchgrass from the wild western territories. Perfect for robbing banks on horseback.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Cowboy and western spirit

Liner Notes

This is the fragrance that put us on the map in ‘08. A strange combination that used to be made with a homemade tincture of herbs, citrus peels, and flowers. As I was learning how to make perfume, I experimented with many older methods. This helped me to understand the aromatic relationships between plants themselves. There is no better way to learn a skill than to just start doing it. That is the ethos of Cowboy Grass. Though it is strange, it was immediately a hit. Cowboy Grass is a play of contrasts. The freshness of bergamot with the dustiness of thyme. The medicinal notes of clary sage and basil against the softness of rose otto. And ultimately the dry peanut wood crackle of vetiver against the warm amber of benzoin. Cowboy Grass evokes the American West. The landscape is filled with grasses, herbs, and shrubs that were used as medicine, food, and ritual for thousands of years. It is impossible to describe just how big the Wild West is. When I first drove across the country on tour with a band in college, I remember one plant kept getting all over the front of our van. It was blowing everywhere that year. I found out later it was clary sage. I was shocked to see real tumbleweeds, the Rockies, the deserts, etc. Clary Sage is at the heart of Cowboy Grass. An herb once used for “fissures of the eye” or some ancient horrific malady, clary sage is pungent, whitish green, fresh and powerful. It can be pulled in many directions. In CBG the green grass notes are expanded upwards towards the top of the fragrance intersecting the rosewood-bergamot’s red woody freshness. The grass effect is modified at the bottom where a rich mapley accord of vetiver and amber reside. The expanse of grasslands almost sacred to an American. Cowboy Grass is dirty-leathery. Not the warm aristocratic leather of drawing room sofas, but rather the saddles worn and ragged from years of use by riders who transversed the West. Perhaps there’s even a nod to the ashy-oily scent of an antique Colt 45 revolver strapped within the seat. This may be what Mick smells like when he whines out the chorus in ‘Torn & Frayed’ (part of the Stones epic Exile on Main Street –a masterpiece of American musical idioms). Side note. One time an Italian man who is influential in the beauty industry told me that Cowboy Grass smelled nothing of Cowboys.
Ingredients

Acohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), citral, geraniol, farnesol, benzyl benzoate

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Cowboy Grass

Rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1.

Rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1. Young green shoots, long spears, russet underbrush. Comes packaged in a scratch-and-sniff envelope.

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Big Sur After Rain Auto Fragrance

Horn echoes in the primeval forest of alpine fir.

Mahler’s hut, perched high above the valley of Alpine fir, horn echoes in the primeval forest. A Nibelungian hoard of precious emerald ambers.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Kraut rock hits
Liner Notes

Deciduous tree and conifer scents draw us back to a time when the Eurasian Peninsula was covered by vast forests. They are often the setting for fairy tales and great myth cycles. Entering the forest is an unknown – it parallels the inward search of the mystic. Austrian Jewish composer Gustav Mahler, whose music transitioned classical music from ornate romance to modernism, explored many personal connections to Teutonic Mythology and the natural world. He composed epic symphonies and song cycles in huts high in the Alps in summertime, channeling Chinese poetry, folktales, and German Romantic writers into deeply autobiographical music that has become universal in the classical repertoire.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, benzyl salicylate, citral, citronellol, coumarin, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, isoeugenol, limonene, linalool

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Amber Teutonic

Where Orkney eagles carried Stoneage souls beyond the jagged cliffs

In the far north, where Orkney eagles carried Stoneage souls beyond the jagged cliffs, clover, sea pinks, sweet cicely, the sonorous sea.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

Celtic Bostonian vibes
Liner Notes

The Tomb of the Eagles lays under a farm by the sea all the way up on the island of Orkney. The journey to get there is long and breathtaking. Though in Scotland, Orkney has its own culture with overtones of old Norse ways. It has the largest amount of Stone Age sites in all of Europe. It feels central to some ancient wisdom, in tune with the landscape, the sea, the standing stones, and countless ruins. The Tomb of the Eagles was discovered by a farmer digging on his own land in the 50s. He discovered people who were buried with eagle talons – perhaps so the eagles could carry their souls to heaven in the next world – no one knows for sure. I love this little mystery discovered in a hidden chamber – magic exists just around the corner of our everyday lives. The scent of the North Sea air is massive, spraying over damp lichen covered rocks. In the wind battered cracks I found tiny sea pinks clutching to the stones and smelling of narcotic carnation. Also sweet cicely fronds that smelled of orange and cinnamon! Again magic just under my feet in the cracks. And the green, green grass and the clover. That’s the scent of the Tomb of The Eagles.

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Tomb Of The Eagles

A fire broke out in the Curling Bros. barbershop.

A fire broke out in the Curling Bros. barbershop in Westlake, N.Y. in 1891. All the shaving tonics with their spearmint, lime, vanilla and lavender burned. A charred bottle was found half-full. It smelled like this.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Old timey tunage
Liner Notes

The other original mainstay of DSD along with Cowboy Grass. A truly old fashioned dandified visit to ye old barbershop through classic aromatic association – lavender, pine, mint, roses, vanilla – with a unique modern twist: devastating smoke. Burning Barbershop is a fougere – a classic genre of usually men’s fragrances that use hay and vanillic notes with herbal lavender and the bitter green base of oakmoss. It is instantly recognizable on grandpas everywhere. This is the scent of a fougere that’s been through fire. I imagine the bottle was full, cooking in the extreme heat of the blaze until the glass was black and cracked. After the embers had cooled, it was dug out underneath the rubble. Inside, stuck to the glass was the cooked resin of all that was fresh and inviting from the cologne. So you have the brightness of limes, cleanliness of lavender, joy of roses, zing of mint, and the sweetness of vanilla all cooked down into a rectified solid mass.
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), coumarin, geraniol, eugenol, citral, evernia prunastri extract, farnesol, citronellol, isoeugenol, benzyl benzoate

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Burning Barbershop

The desert airs of Marfa, cosmic axis of West Texas.

The desert airs of Marfa, cosmic axis of West Texas. Creosote shrubs and sumac primed with Chihuahuan mesa woods–mesquite, oak, and pinyon pine. Created for our friends at the El Cosmico hotel in Marfa.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Global nomads in Texas desert
Liner Notes

Marfa, Texas is a not-so-secret place far from anywhere else. Since Donald Judd brought his art (and then artists) to this crossroads in the high plains desert, people have flocked from all over the world to experience it’s magic. Something is in the air. UFO-like lights dot the horizon (I saw them with my own eyes!). A confluence of cultures leads to a very free-spirited ethos. Liz Lambert started El Cosmico, her boutique campground, she says as an oasis for “nomads.” Bands, artists, and seekers of all type travel out of their way to soak in the Spirit of the arid land. There is vibrancy and newness in Marfa that contrasts with something old timeless and spiritual. For this scent, I made a study of the plants surrounding the town in the Chihuahuan desert. Many of these desert plants have oils with strong aromas that they produce presumably to ward off predators, protect from the harsh wind and sun or to retain moisture. For the perfume that would take you there, I placed desert pepper and sumac, with the landscape dominant creosote (that smells of oily desert rain), over a sand accord with dry mesquite wood. The scent is otherworldly like the area. I don’t think it smells like anything else. It is white smoke, the magic of aldehydes, and strange alien plants in the desert.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), geraniol, eugenol, isoeugenol, farnesol

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El Cosmico

The rituals of the proto-Mississippian death cult of the 1200s.

Based on the rituals of the proto-Mississippian death cult of the 1200s. Native birch tar, viola, & white spruce grounded in incense & cypress root.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Badass/punk ethos
Liner Notes

Mississippi Medicine is based on what little is known about the rituals of a fast growing death cult that emerged in the southern part of the US in the 1200s. Called the South Eastern Ceremonial complex, it is more of a period within the Mississippian culture (the mound builders) when a specific system of religion quickly emerged. Other names for it were The Buzzard Cult and simply The Southern Death Cult (badass). The cedar tree was sacred to them, representing an axis mundi (a gateway between the lower and upper worlds). Nothing gets me going more than the concept that seemingly mundane places – a cave, a space under a bush, a tiny lake, are gateways to the other world. Ancient peoples' understanding of the world integrated landscape, flora, and fauna into their whole being. Mississippi Medicine is rich in cedar. Dry red Virginia cedar. Healthy doses of incense help marry the wood to the pine. Incense has been used in rituals since the dawn of time, which means we connect it to religious feeling in the depth of our bones. The heart of MM is filled out with an accord of wild viola that could have grown by the mounds in Mississippi. Birch tar adds a primal smoke. It smells mysterious and ancient.
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), citral, eugenol
Pocket Perfume Ingredients

Fractionated coconut oil, isopropyl myristate, parfum (fragrance), citral, eugenol

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Mississippi Medicine

Rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1.

Rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1. Young green shoots, long spears, russet underbrush.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

California Dreamin’
Liner Notes

For breathtaking American vistas, I think Big Sur hovers somewhere at the top of the list. The river running down through the mountains hits the fog covered sea. Sunsets over the pacific are next level. You can feel the magnetic pull of Asia on the other side of the vast water. As you drive down highway 1 - top down, motorway music, the windswhipping - your car bends around each corner discovering a new jaw dropping bridge, private beach, or sonorous mountain. Poets and mystics populate the magic place. And the flora of the California coast is extremely varied. By Big Sur, you have a wonderful micro climate from the heat and the fog. Redwoods and other conifers hide groves off the side of the road.  Eucalyptus abounds. But it doesn’t yet smell medicinal like when you encounter the oil in a sauna. It is still thick with green shoots saturated with their perfumed freshness. The long spears of the Eucalyptus dart out from the branch, eventually falling to the floor creating a dry russet underbrush. When it rains, the earth is soaked and the scent of the eucalyptus combines with the fog to make an almost natural medicine lodge. Through the cracks in the trees you can see the sweeping waves.

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Big Sur After Rain

Frühstück with JSB at Café Zimmerman, 1723.

Frühstück with JSB at Café Zimmerman, 1723. Strong coffee, buttery almond pastries, pipe tobacco.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

German songs/songs about breakfast
Liner Notes

I wanted to create the scent of the café in Leipzig where Bach wrote his famous Java Cantata in the 1700s. I imagine tightly packed tables of people breakfasting over buttery almond pastries and strong coffee. Smoking pipes, reading newspapers, talking. Creamers of milk, kitchen steam, tobacco clouds, a hint of an old fireplace in the corner, and burgundy leather upholstery on the seats. I love breakfast. It’s really a passion of mine.  This candle is our first overtly gourmand scent. It’s light hearted. I love the idea that you can change your house into this legendary café at such a specific moment in time simply by lighting it.

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Breakfast Leipzig

FORWARD Sample Set
Four 1.5 ML samples, including El Cosmico, I Don't Know What, Cowboy Grass and Radio Bombay

Forward Sample Set

Silently watch the flame for 7 hours and you may spy liberation.

The revered fig tree of Siddhartha and Lord KṚṢṆA. Silently watch the flame for 7 hours and you may spy liberation.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

East/West
Liner Notes

India is in our DNA.  It is Kavi’s motherland and it has always called to me.  It is a big source of inspiration for the brand.  The Bodhi – a holy fig tree - is revered in India for its association with Lord Krishna.  It is also the tree Gotama Buddha received enlightenment under.  You can still visit the place where the tree stood (and stands replanted) in the Bihar state.  Holy Ficus is a loose fantasy based on the this tree.  We took a classic fig accord and draped it in ginger, saffron, frankincense, and cardamom.  It fills the room with a Indian spices, wonderful fruit, and hopefully a faded memory of something larger.

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Holy Ficus

Tea service at the colonial parlor of Mme. Revere, topless psychic.

Tea service at the colonial parlor of Mme. Revere, topless psychic. Hot silver heated by open flame. Bohea vapours, radiant heat, milk.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

Feel the spirit
Liner Notes

Spirit Lamp should smell like the flame on a silver tea service in a place of ill repute in colonial era Boston. The spirit lamp was used for light and heating fueled by alcohol or “spirit.” I can picture the teapot -- perhaps smithed by Paul Revere (he crushed silver when not shouting alarms on horseback). Inside the water boils with legendary bohea tea (an oolong probably from near the Wuyi Mountain preserve). The steam is peachy, airy, with touches of bleached ginger and coconut milk. The air of a colonial brothel given respite by the freshness of this rare tea drunk to stay up all night reading fortunes in a smoky den.

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Spirit Lamp

The hills above Odessa.

Sparkling leaf, cubeb, green pepper, & cracked Ukrainian coriander seed. Cool spices & Black Sea breeze – like the hills above Odessa.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Ukraine: steppe to discotheque
Liner Notes

Coriander is cool. It is a spice, but it is cool. When we think of spices, we think of warmth: nutmeg, ginger, clove, cinnamon. We picture roaring fires, winter warmth, or the tropical climes where these plants grow. Of course with some perfume wizardry you can turn these on their heads. But coriander is already cool. It is fresh, green, pungent, and evocative of the grass, the expanse of fields, the sweeping sea.
Our coriander scent builds upon these qualities. It is the coriander from the hills above Odessa on the Black Sea. Tall stocks holding celadon grooved seeds looking down at ships at port.
In the top you have the fresh, pungent coriander heightened by sappy green lime peels and the aggressive herbal scrawl of rosemary from Morocco (which is rounder than those from Eastern Europe). Cubeb seeds - the noble cousin to black pepper - give more dry musky round cool.
Clary sage takes the baton of herbal strangeness and runs it into the fresh heart. There in the heart is radiant ether - aquatic materials and the ubiquitous ambery cool of iso e super & co along with the rich hay like absolute of lavender. The base of green moss and unctuous musks hold together the lasting fresh cool of cool spice.
It is an everyday scent, light enough to meld with skin and project its presence with a subtle aura, or as the French say, I don’t know what. Fresh, but unique with its pungent green atmosphere.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl benzoate, geraniol, citral, linalool, farnesol

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Coriander

Title

A sample set with our greatest juices.

A 1.5 ml sample set with our greatest juices. DEBASER ROSE ATLANTIC RADIO BOMBAY IDKW BOWMAKERS COWBOY GRASS

Playlist

Spotify Playlist

Top tracks from each perfume's playlist. Meta.

Greatest Hits Vol. 1 Discovery Set

Gift Ideas

Ragas radiating in the Bandra heat.

Transistor radio hewn of sandalwood radiates ragas in the Bandra heat. Hot copper tubes warm the soft wood releasing blooms of musk, cream, peach, ambrette, coco, cedar distillates.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Bombay Radio
Liner Notes

I am interested in hypothetical scent. Not everything has a strong or readily perceivable aroma, but objects can suggest a fragrance. Light bulbs glow. Electricity courses through their metal filaments. They melt the dust on their surface emitting wisps of heat. The tubes in amplifiers have a certain aroma. When my ‘69 Fender Deluxe gets heated-up (after rip-roaring monster shredding), the back of the amp produces a hot dusty metallic grease perfume - the scent of backstage in a humid venue. So what if there was a tube amplifier in an old radio made of sandalwood? Then the interaction of the heat would open up the pores of the wood, singing its smooth elegant fragrance - puffs of musky cedar, peach, coconut, lactones, milk. Real sandalwood essence is perfection. I often wear it neat. It smells of India, effigies, purity, focus. Unfortunately, it has been overharvested, so perfumers don’t use the oil from Mysore anymore. Radio Bombay is a deconstruction of the Mysore santal rebuilt from all the aspects written above. I imagine the radio sitting in a small hot shop in Bandra - the “Brooklyn” of Bombay (sorry). The heat deconstructs the oils in the wood. Ragas and Geeta Dutt tunes jangle out of its tiny speaker in the busy city.
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), limonene, geraniol, linalool, citral
Pocket Perfume Ingredients

Fractionated coconut oil, isopropyl myristate, parfum (fragrance), limonene, geraniol, linalool, citral

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Radio Bombay

A ritual in the holy Kiso forest.

A ritual in the holy Kiso forest: ceremonial katana unguent of rare woods, temple incense, leather bushi armor.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

Japanese pysch and forest music
Liner Notes

Japanese forests contain numerous trees with wood that is sacred in traditional religious ceremonies. The connection to the forest is realized in ritual offerings that include incense made from these rare woods.
Hinoki wood’s strong timber has been used for temples, Noh theaters, baths, and masu. Hinoki from the Kiso forest was sourced for the holy Ise shrine in Mie Prefecture. Sawara Cypress is a sturdy lemon scented “false” cypress with red stringy bark. The timber is also used for temples and shrines. It grows wild on the is- lands of Kyushu and Honshu. Asahi zuru maple is an ancient variety of maple native to Japan with beautifully ornate pink, white, and green leaves. Its name means “swan at dawn.”
EDP Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), alpha-isomethyl ionone, benzyl alcohol, benzl benzoate, benzyl salicylate, citral, citro- nellol, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, isoeugenol, limonene, linalool

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Amber Kiso

Customizable Sample Set

A lone peacock floats over cream lilies.

A lone peacock floats over cream lilies, oleander, and a sea of alabaster violet. Orchestral pads of harps and horns drone. Pale blue fog hangs in the far woodlands.

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

Spotify Playlist

The soft parts of Classical
Liner Notes

Charles Tomlin Griffes is an American composer of classical music. He comes from a period when music was flourishing in the U.S. A good deal of great early 20th century American music owes its language to French (and Russians working in Paris) music of the time - especially Ravel and Debussy. Though the term is much debated, this music is often described as impressionistic. Whatever it is called, it was the freshest sound of the new century. Large orchestras of odd percussion, soft sweeping strings, and harps transported the listener into dreamlike worlds where chromatic melodies hunted around the colorful corners of the tunes.
The French music being made by Frenchmen was undoubtedly French - artistic, charismatic, self aware, tongue-in-cheek - with a deep interest in mystery. Americans took this music - or this language of impressionistic tone painting - and applied to something distinct in America: tremendously vast landscapes. It is liquid music that moves and flows in grand harmonies describing the features of the American West, the open plains, and the towering peaks. Griffes most famous piece is a lush musical journey through the most iconic American landscape of all, the Grand Canyon.
The piece that inspired this perfume is called “The White Peacock” by Fiona Macleod — a Scottish woman famous throughout the highlands for her dreamy works—and set to music by Griffes. It is one of the few tone poems based on an actual poem. The music, scored for a small orchestra, takes direction from the words. Mercurial/magic harps, winding strings, quirky brass horns, and the comical buzz of clarinets describe the beautifully soft language: “cliffs of basalt, fronds of cactus, where the bulbul singeth, cream-white poppies.” In Griffes music, the listener can hear the cream white poppies, the sweeping seas of flowers, and most important the silent noble glide of the grand bird that floats above the fields of flowers.
For the scent, I first worked on the scent of lily. It is quite a basic accord that you find in everything scented - laundry detergent all the way up to parfum. The common accord is lily-like but is certainly not realistic. Lily accords are comforting and pleasant. I started there and made something very easy and approachable. The people I showed it too liked it. Kavi liked it. We almost put it out. But it was not enough. It was safe and frankly, a bit boring. It lacked the allure of the real flower. Real lilies are hauntingly narcotic. Frosty powdery vanillic with off notes of overripe green melon and the porkier side of clove distillates. So I got some lilies and went to work. Going back and forth between the real thing and my accord, embellishing it with touches of the off notes until I had a real life white lily sitting there.
The lily had to float over the fields of violets, conjure the distant fog, and the oleander of the poem. We made the real lily more unctuous with jasmine grandiflorum absolute - the elegant jasmine of Egypt, India, and France. I made it whiter with ambrette musks. I made it creamier with liquid ambrette extract - the wettest fresh musk of hibiscus seeds. One of the rarest and most prized natural/non-animal musks. Violet and rose Otto help extend the freshness of the bergamot and melon top accord. The overall effect like the music is lush, warm, noble, and dreamlike.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl salicylate, limonene, benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, butylphenyl methylpropional, cinnamal, cinnamyl, citronellol, farnesol, geraniol, eugenol, isoeugenol, linalool

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White Peacock Lily

In clothes that look like rugs, singing “we must never break the chain.”

On saffron tanned leather seats, in clothes that look like rugs, singing “we must never break the chain”. Lacquered chestnut paneling with puffs of burning fuel.

Playlist | Liner Notes

Spotify Playlist

1985 Radio mix
Liner Notes

In the 80s my parents drove Toyotas and Hondas. They were cool. But around the corner an English woman drove the neighborhood kids to school in a 1985 300TD Benz. If it was cold, it would not start. I remember jamming into the back with 6 kids (no belts) and sitting on the springy saffron tan seat just freezing; the sweet smoke of diesel coming through the warming engine (and our color changing ski gloves). Driving around was big in my family. We would pile in wearing our Vision Street Wear (my parents in oddly shaped orange, white, yellow, and brown shag-rug looking cloths) with our hair looking like the E.T. cast, and drive around the seaside towns of New England with the radio blaring Fleetwood Mac, Duran Duran, and Bob Marley Legend. Life seemed careless and endless – as childhood often does. Most adults of that era found the 80s vapid and in poor taste, but man, how magic it seems to the children of the 80s.  When Kavi and I bought our first car in NYC we almost went safe with some terrible modern monstrosity. But then we answered an ad on craigslist and found a pristine ’85 300 turbo diesel Mercedes-Benz for cheap. The scent was the same as I remembered. It seemed fancy to own what was once an actual luxury.  It is a car of timeless elegance. It’s boxy look brings to mind all 80s movies, the Alps, and awkward fancy life that wasn’t attainable to anyone I knew in the 80s. This candle is an homage to that legend and smells of the air inside – so warm and dangerous.

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'85 Diesel

Transparent orange blossom water, crystalline flower parts, dew.

Add transparent orange blossom water, crystalline flower parts, and dew to any fragrance (or just rock it solo).

Playlist | Liner Notes | Ingredients

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Songs about flowers, crystals, air, and general open-ended  transparency. Oh and Paradise.
Liner Notes

Enhancers are a fun way to make transparent fragrances that can be worn alone or layered with whatever someone else is digging at the moment. I wanted to make a soft crystalline perfume that highlighted the humid parts inside of a flower. My muse, so to speak, was a memory of orange blossom water liberally sprinkled in the air upon entering a market on the back streets of Fez in Morocco. Orange Blossom water is shockingly inviting—like the smell of fresh baked bread.  I always wished the water could be worn like a perfume but it doesn’t last (it’s the secret ingredient I use in my famous – with my kids – pancakes). And the oil you extract from the flower, though lovely, doesn’t have the same balmy water vibe. Crystal Pistil my attempt to make that fresh humid flower note last and last in all its crystal glory.
Ingredients

Alcohol denat., parfum (fragrance), aqua (water), benzyl alcohol, benzyl benzoate, benzyl salicylate, cinnamyl alcohol, citral, citronellol, eugenol, farnesol, geraniol, limonene, linalool

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