Scents and Sensibility

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2:38Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show are David and Kavi Moles, co-founders of DSN Durga. We're talking the art of fragrance, the business of being married and working together, and so much more. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun.

3:19Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join puck or start a free trial.

3:44Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you had a great week. Last night, I was at Bicester Village in the UK for a talk with Alex Eagle. We had a great time. I finally, finally got to check out Bister after years of trying to go there. I have to tell you, I'm not just saying this because Bister Village put the whole talk together. I really am not. This place is remarkable. The whole thing, it's called value retail for a reason. So it is discounted. So you go, I went to Saint Laurent, I got a skirt for 250 bucks or whatever. the experience is insane it's so amazing there I don't ever go to the mall like even in LA I don't I'm not shopping in malls it's not my thing I I can't even explain to you like it's so luxe it was incredibly nice it's the only Dior like discount Dior store in the world I went in I got to go in like as a journalist I didn't have to wait in the line thank you Bicester Village to let me go in and walk around amazing store like I don't know how to explain to you it's one of the most interesting things they do is like the visual merchandising looks like a real store so the Ralph Lauren has a Ralph's coffee you look you can't tell the difference between Madison Avenue Ralph Lauren and and the Bicester Village Ralph Lauren anyway it's really amazing Belmont Park in New York is owned by the same company you should check it out if you're in the U.S.

5:15it was incredible I had a great time I got a lot of really nice stuff at Sunderland I got a pair of jeans I got a tank top I got two skirts maybe that's it I didn't go nuts like I didn't spend that much money because it wasn't that expensive I highly I have and then I had dinner at Otolenghi by myself and it was it was really nice there's a deals for organics we talked about this a bit on the podcast with Alex who is amazing and is on a future episode so you should check it out but anyway I had a great time I'm heading back to Paris now I'll be in LA next week I'm excited to see many of you this week on line sheet we had so much good stuff on Tuesday there was my interview with Everlane founder Michael Priceman where he talks about his next venture that was inspired by Sheehan's acquisition of his old venture.

6:07Then on Wednesday, Rachel gave like the inside scoop on what's happening at Estee Lauder and why that deal to merge with Pooj really fell through. It's amazing. It's such a good piece. Lots of M &A heat and it was really fun. If you want to know who L 'Oreal might buy, you need to read it. Stefan, the CEO of whose surname I'm not going to show you for right now but the CEO of Estee Lauder he spoke at the Financial Times Luxury Summit and apparently he was amazing like multiple people told me he was really good so he's interesting everyone who works with him really likes him I was talking to Rachel about it but anyway still tough times at Estee good luck to him then on Thursday Malik our buddy Malik Morris published an amazing piece on fear of God's arrested development and then on Friday Malik wrote about Target's turnaround attempt that involves potentially Isaac Mizrahi revival of that collaboration sounds like 99 % and 99.9 % it's happening they're not confirming but I think it's true it's definitely been in the works for a anyway it was a really amazing week on line sheet always an amazing week on Puck and I hope to see you soon.

7:26Enjoy this interview with Kavi and David. Kavi and David Moultz, welcome to Fashion People. Thank you for having us. We are honored. Thanks for having us. Hi, Lauren. I'm so happy to have you. I think you're the first perfumers that I've ever had on. Yeah, that is an amazing honor. That is amazing honor. Wow. Yeah, we get to talk about fragrance. I'm so excited. So you two are the founders of Dia Sundurga, you're also married, which is a part of your story. We were just kind of talking about like storytelling and marketing and all that stuff prior to going on on air. But tell me how you two met and like, oh, wait, before I forget, what'd you have for breakfast this morning?

8:13Oh, that's so fun. I just, you go first off. She doesn't eat breakfast yet. I had tea, but then I eat my breakfast slash lunch at 1040, kind of like on the dot every day. I figured this out. She used to just get really hungry, always. And so we've called it a 1040 for a long time. Yeah, it's called a 1040. That's my first meal of the day. I had beans, roasted cabbage, roasted tomatoes, and squash. Amazing. Which is leftovers from dinner. No whole wheat tortilla and nutritional yeast? No. Oh, nutritional yeast. Yes, always. Nutritional yeast is like, I'm like made of nutritional yeast. Yeah. You two are not in the same place, which is why you're guessing what the other one had for breakfast.

9:01Yeah. David, live from Los Angeles, where did you have? Silver Lake Inn, and I needed to eat something quick. And it's next to Erewhon, but I opted for the breakfast here. and I had two eggs over easy, breakfast potatoes and some bread and some tea. Oh, that sounds so good. I, the 1040, I think it's the future because I also do this a lot because like this morning I ate earlier, but usually there's a lot of times in the mornings I'm in my home office and just kind of going through stuff. And in the middle of the morning is when I'm really, really hungry. Yeah. And feel like I need to eat. And then I'm not really hungry again till like five.

9:48And we hear here in five thirty. To me, breakfast is life. And I live for breakfast. And like, I would never want to miss it. I can totally miss dinner. I don't need like a crazy, awesome, fancy dinner. I want breakfast and lunch. And then like after that, whatever happens, happens. It also helps you from eating prevents you from eating too late, which is, yes, you know, not good i never eat late no i mean that is really what do they say breakfast like a king lunch like a prince and dinner like a popper popper yeah yeah i love that i feel that good yeah it's all about intermittent fasting when you come down to it no matter when you eat oh that's what they say that's true right the longer you can go without anything that's speaking suspicion as a culture we're all just overthinking nutrition and food and it changes every three years and the foundation of life is something that goes beyond but it's such an Interesting topic of conversation.

10:40I'm just kidding. She's kidding. No, it's not. She's kidding. Well, it's like the weather. But yeah, my husband the other day was like, my vitamin D is too low. And I'm like, we live in California. How can this be a thing? Anyway, so now tell me how you all met. And then we can get into the business that you built together. You want to do this one, Kav? Yeah. David and I met on Avenue B in Manhattan outside a bar. He was outside one bar. I was outside another bar. They were like two bars away from each other. And, you know, people were just hanging out outside. It was summer and we just started talking.

11:17He caught my eye and I caught his. I kicked it though. You didn't walk up to me. Come on. I walked over to you. Yes. He walked over to me and he started talking about Russian literature. He asked me if I was Gujarati. Holy shit. You don't remember that part. Do you remember the Gujarati part? Yes, I know. from what you said, but the Russian thing, that's surprising to me. He was trying to impress me with knowing different regions of India. And we just started talking and we went to a concert that night. I had tickets to a concert that night and I asked him if he would come with me and he did. And then we've been together from that moment.

11:58Yep. Wow. How long ago was that? 06? 2007. 7. 7. We met in 7. Almost 20 years. yeah amazing so it's my husband and I same thing oh same thing like like together since moment one since oh seven no we've been yeah we've been together we we've known each other for 20 years and we've been together for 18 or it'll be 19 this year yeah yeah yeah it's the same same timeline um you really grow up together when when you do it like that oh my god yeah that's people always ask us for like business stuff because we've always worked together and it's like we basically like you said, we grew up together. We became true adults.

12:41We had business and kids, you know, all in this crazy bumble. I remember back in the day, people would ask like, how do you guys work together? And we'd have some like BS line about like life work separation. But I think life work separation sort of ended for our civilization recently. So it doesn't matter anyway. I agree. Jens and Emma agreed are really anti-work-life separation. And Emma's book is coming out. And I feel like that's going to start a whole dialogue about it. Because she's always like, no, of course we talk about work. It's fluid. After work. Yeah, but it's fine. And then at work, if we had to talk about something personal, it's fine.

13:22It's just totally fluid. so how did you all first start working together what was it that like what kind of project yeah so that's the thing right so you know Diaz and Durga is like basically like Kavi and I's like art project right we we knew nothing about perfume nothing about business nothing about the perfume business and we started you know we were falling in love when you're young and going away uh to like lots of used bookstores well just going to like cute towns and I was so attracted to like books about plants and I wanted to know about plants. I wanted to know about all the plants growing around me in Brooklyn and wherever I go.

13:57And to this day, you know, I clock plants wherever I go. And I realized it was the sense of things that really interested me. And, um, I, I was like, I want to start making some perfumes. So I just bought some oils and like literally made like tinctures and weird stuff for Kavi and for friends. And it took off and, um, sorry, it didn't take off yet because we just made it for friends and kavi was like you know we should start a perfume brand we should just like make this and like you know and we knew lots of like you know we knew the guys at like freeman's and ernest soan and in god we trust and so when we made something like this is rad let's sell it and it and it took off and we realized that we could start making perfumes with really rich narratives like i was in my office with tons of records and listening to like these classical records and it's crazy because back then you could buy one of the most important symphonies of all time from the greatest conductor for like$1.99 at a record store.

14:55And you'd get this big, beautiful piece of art and you'd put the music on and you could just listen to the music, but you could look at the liner notes and the liner notes tell you everything about the composer and the music, the conductor. And I was thinking like, why don't people do this with perfume? Why wouldn't you have a perfume and then explain its entire world? Like the sounds, the music, the color, the description, like every little thing about what you're smelling. Like it's this entire world inside of a bottle, just like a symphony is on this little disc inside of a record. Right. And that was like the genesis of who we became, because we realized we can just make these like gigantic art pieces that you wear on your skin and like enter through your nose and peruse around.

15:37In God We Trust really sent me back to Brooklyn in 2007. Yeah, you did live here, right? Yeah. Yeah. I lived in Carroll Gardens, so I was close to the... They were in Carroll Gardens, right? The one of them. Well, yeah. Later on, it started in Williamsburg. I worked at St. Helens Cafe on North 8th and Wythe, and it was across the street from that. And she used to come in. She was the first person I knew who was successful in this DIY Brooklyn thing. She would come in and sew these hats that then went... I guess no one would use the word viral back then, but they were all of a sudden in all these magazines.

16:13and she was just sewing them in this cafe that we worked at, which was like, to me, the epicenter of Williamsburg at that time. I always say that a lot of our success, early success. Yeah. What did I say? Jetan? No, you didn't. Oh, St. Helens. Yeah, because I worked at Jetan before. And so knowing people from Jetan and St. Helens, that's what helped because you just knew all of the players who were doing like the cool things like in arts and music and everything, Like every actor came in and every musician, like you just knew all these people. It was it felt like hate Ashbury 1969 to me at Williamsburg around that time.

16:51It was it was just this magic time. There were dogs, wild packs of dogs everywhere. Like, you know, it was crazy. It's interesting to me. I was in New York. I mean, I go to New York a lot and I was in New York in December and I went to High Valley Books and I walked by seven. Is it five leaves? and it's still around. So do you know that those are the guys, right? So by the, I had a feeling it was all connected. Jatan is the first guy, Luke, he figured out this model where you have this highly beautiful, small curated little thing and you cook the food someplace and then you bring it upstairs and you heat it up so it can be very quick and like not chasing Michelin stars, like not trying to be anything but like the coolest hangout for people.

17:38And then everyone who works there left and started their own cafe. So St. Helens, I worked there. Noel was the owner. And Five Leaves were these other guys. So it's this diaspora. Do you know Jatana's closing or closed? I heard it was closing. Unreal. It's real sad. It's just weird. Yeah. So sad. Very weird. When I was the editor of fashionista.com, we had our office was next door to Mott Street, to Jatana Mott Street, right? That was the street. Yeah. Yeah. And so I ate there like every single day. Of course. Roast chicken sandwich. couscous. David, did you serve her coffee? I guess we're talking about totally different timelines now.

18:16I worked there in 2003. No, yeah, no. This is post. This is 2010. I was like all, it was crazy. Yeah, it's wild that it's, well, when I went by and saw Five Leaves was still open, I was like, I guess like the food is just good and there are people so it could be open for another 15 years until they don't want it to be open anymore like well the world doesn't need any more blank streets right we should need well i mean that's a whole other thing do does it sometimes i'm relieved when i see a blank street i have to be honest because i'm just like at least it's coffee i'll be i'll be really i leave i'm relieved to see a starbucks when i'm not in the city like when we're traveling on the road then you're like okay that's something but around here yeah too many too much blank street especially in New York a lot.

19:07I guess I don't drink coffee, so I guess it doesn't... We drink tea. That's why we both had tea for breakfast. Do you all still live in Brooklyn? Oh, yeah. Downtown. In fact, downtown has the energy to me of the old Brooklyn aughts, like, Williamsburg-y vibe because there's lots of blown out, like, no man's land-y kind of places. And, like, that's what you need in order for artists to move into your neighborhood is it has to be, like, some places that are just, like, dark and not much going on. And like, it's, it's hidden in downtown, like on the back streets. That's interesting. I've never thought of that area like that before.

19:44No one does. I think I'm stretching it a little bit. No one does because it, not only does it not just have like one L train that will only take you to like one spot. It has like every single train right here. It's like an anonymous intersection of neighborhoods. Like you're next to Cobble Hill, you're next to Brooklyn Heights, you're next to Fort Greene, but you're kind of in the middle of nowhere. And it's got this like anonymity to it that we both like because we're not raising young children anymore so like they're they're older and like very independent so we just like we we left brownstone beautiful brooklyn like about a year ago to to move into like a high-rise like glass-covered condo and have not looked back once it's amazing so convenient it's like living in a mall like just it's like it's like just being like i'm done with like the crumbling brownstone dream that like we all wanted to live and now live like conveniently in like a mall i gotta say i lived at 99 gold in vinegar hill which is like that on the way to vinegar hill on the old i'm sure that cafe jitan is closed but um it looks like miami oh that one's still open that's funny i think so i don't understand that but but um it's this building that's across from a buddhist temple and it looks like Miami and it was so clean.

21:00And anytime we have a fantasy of moving back, all my husband does is look and see how much the like big apartment is there now. Because living in a, I would never, I would only live in New York if I was living in like a new clean building. Cause the rat thing too. Oh my God, I fought. I have the craziest rat story ever. I'm not gonna derail this conversation for it. But I had to fight like a giant mama rat like in our old house. like I it was honestly like going to war it was like one of the most stressful things I've ever experienced in my life it was like a parting gift from the old house I was in a closed I was in a closed thing under the stoop with like the giant attacking grandma rat but like yes stolen packages too like stolen packages we have a doorman no stolen packages oh I it's yeah that has been such a pleasure moving to Los Angeles and living up a private driveway yeah because I haven't had to worry about that for years but yeah it's it's truly the worst in the old in our old development here they peep there was just like vans going around all day looking for stuff yeah yeah just looking just crazy yes yes we know that fashion people love to spend money but we also know that fashion people love a deal so what if you could take that a step further and actually earn rewards while you shop That's exactly what Rakuten does.

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23:50So you start making these perfumes. How did you, A, figure out how to make them? And B, once it like started to pick up traction, how did you, when did you realize, okay, this is a thing that we could like do as our jobs as a real business? Okay, so the number two is easy. We got approached by Anthropologie to make them like a line of perfumes. And they were like psyched and put in this giant order for us to make this custom perfume for them. And we couldn't believe it. I think it was like$26 ,000 or something. And we thought that was like$26 million. And we quit our jobs right away. She was an architect.

24:27I was a musician, but waiting tables. And we just put in our time and quit right away. So it happened super quick. Like literally we made our, I made my first perfume ever in December of, what year did you say we met, Cove? Seven? Yeah. So I made my first perfume December of 2007. By February of 2008, we had something that said Diaz Enderga on it, like a label that we were like selling and then we quit our jobs within within a year and what was the first question oh how did we do it yeah yeah like how did you figure out how to make a perfume okay so i think that i can figure out any artistic discipline i think that's how my mind works like i i actually i'm a musician i make perfume i draw i write poetry i think i can do like any artistic discipline because to me basically art is just the process of like creating an idea and uh like manifesting an idea in this world and you just do it through different variables so you know like a perfume is a lot like a really great broth or a soup you know it's like a symphonic like thing with all the different instruments like those those two things make a lot of sense for what perfume actually is um the way i started is i bought a bunch of materials and started making things and wrote it all down and figured out like how each one worked understanding the relationships, you know, through experimentation.

25:45I love to just say it's true what the Beatles guy said. It's you put in 10 ,000 hours to learn how to do the thing. But the interesting thing for us is that I realized early on that we could tell these extremely rich narratives through sense that I think lots of, I thought was missing from the industry where like, there's a huge disconnect in the perfume industry where you don't really hear from the perfumer, right? You hear from a brand that hires, there's probably about three or 500 actual perfumers in the world who literally like make the formulas. And they make like everyone's perfume. And so most perfumes that you know are made by like the same 100 people.

26:26And there's just this disconnect that you don't get to hear from those people. It'd be like if you loved all these bands, but like everyone wrote the songs of those bands. And then you talk to the people in the bands and you said like, oh I love that song you sang about like how you got your heart broken in July and they're like oh no no no I that didn't happen to me I just singing this song that somebody else wrote like for us we actually we're the brand DS and Durga but I still am the perfumer she is the designer there's no middleman no one's helping us make our creative and so I think that the opportunity the reason I'm getting back to what I was saying the reason that there's that authenticity to our approach is you You can, it's so easy to explain the whole world of our perfume because I actually made it.

27:12Whereas if someone else made it, I have to sort of invent things, be like, oh, well, this was my grandmother's house and it comes with the most premium rose from France. You know, like for us, it's we we realized we could tell a really rich narrative about a specific room in a town in a certain year in Salem, Massachusetts. And the reason that we're telling this is because that what happened in there changed music forever. You know, like so so we realized that you can make very rich narratives the way you make, you know, narrative poetry, literature, movies, that kind of thing. and Kavi what is your role as the designer like is it helping to frame up this story like how do you come into the creative process so we say that I you know I'm building like the city around the world that David's building with the perfume so I'm building like the the packaging so for 15 for 15 years I've done it I did it all on my own so what David is saying like all our creative as he and I.

28:16I have much more help now nowadays in the past few years. So we have like a much bigger creative team than just me, visual creative team. So I do the packaging, I do the branding, I do the designs, I do the artwork on the candles. I have a big hand in the store designs naturally because I was an architect and having our five physical stores is like a major moment for me to have like a say in the physical expression of the brand. The stores are super important to me because it's like the one place where we can fully tell the story in the way that we want it to be told and like interact with our customer and the way that you know we want to interact with them and um you know have our full line represented because we really view everything as a as a whole collection like we're always thinking of you know how is the collection evolving what does it need um what holes we're trying to fill um we're always trying to put more you know originality original ideas out into the perfume world so um the store is a particularly great place for us to do that um it's you know like working directly with the customer we have these things called studio juices that are um launches that we do a few times a year and they're limited edition and just direct drops of perfume so what's great about them is that David can, you know, kind of make a perfume that isn't really like not labored over.

29:48It's like, it's as authentic of a, you know, artistic creation as anything else he makes, but maybe he's just, you know, exploring some kind of crazy idea that isn't necessarily a commercial idea, you know, that isn't necessarily, we don't have to worry like, oh, are they going to like it in this market? Are they going to like that? Is it going to sell here? Is it going to sell there? It's just like a very pure artistic expression. And then I will take that. And this is how it generally works with all perfumes, Studio Juice or our permanent line. I'll take like his idea. We'll talk about like what it means, what the colors are, what the vibe is, what the time of day is, what the season is, what like, where is it?

30:28When is it? And then, you know, translate that into some like special artwork. So it looks very different from our normal perfumes. And it's just a fun kind of like charrette for both of us to like quickly like work on something and put it out there and there's something that we've always loved about the impulsive nature of it and the impulsive nature of design in general like sometimes like his favorite things are things that he's like this is the first the first iteration and i made it and i'd say almost always and not just in me it's all it's also in yours it's also in music the first take often come back to the first thing, you know, because it's just got like that kind of, yeah, raw energy.