Biography of a Scent: Meet Me in the Powder Room
Written by Laura Regensdorf
Sometimes a solo act is the way to go: one crystalline vision. Other times, the magic is in the ping-pong of ideas between two sets of collaborators—as was the case with this new candle created by D.S. & Durga for VIOLET GREY. These two brands live for a well-told story, knowing that behind every fragrance is a world of references to explore. Here, in the first installment of our new series, Biography of a Scent, David and Kavi Moltz—the founders of the Brooklyn fragrance house—tell the story of this provocation in candle form: Meet Me in the Powder Room.
THE SCENE
A preliminary mood board from VIOLET GREY pegged the scent to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where Truman Capote’s Swans would turn up for cocktails in their voluminous coifs and little black dresses. The working concept was “Things Said at a Party,” which got things rolling. “I went ham on this,” says David, recalling the string of phrases he sent along—each one like a cinematic snapshot. “I really wanted to call it ‘Don’t Touch the Speakers!’ or ‘She Had a Nervous Breakdown in Paris.’” The setting crystallized as a late ’60s party with a decidedly swank crowd, martinis in hand. It’s a modernist space, like “Halston’s townhouse by Paul Rudolph,” Kavi says. “The staircase is definitely one of those slat designs—you could not live there if you had little kids or pets because they would just fall through!” David chimes in with another imagined snippet of party chatter, which eventually makes its way into his liner notes for the candle: “It’s not a staircase, it’s a revolution.”
THE NAME
“What’s happening at those parties?” David says about the name that won out—this one with a sly innuendo that reads as vintage VIOLET GREY. “‘Meet me in the powder room’: There’s something a little cheeky and sexy about what might go down,” he says. “Is it sex, is it drugs?” Maybe just a morsel of gossip and a well-timed touch-up. “Powder is a provocative word sometimes”—and a familiar quality in scent, he adds—“so it all started to come together for me.”
THE SCENT
Naturally the namesake flower got a nod. “Violet is one of the great heart notes of perfumery,” says David, waving off the notion that it’s necessarily locked into an old-fashioned context. “Violet flower is the smell of ionones, which are one of the main aromachemicals that were discovered in the early 20th century. It’s so classic.” When violet is used deftly, it can bring overtones of the past into the present—like a Coltrane sample layered with a modern breakbeat, he explains: “No one would think it’s from the old world.” The timeline for the candle creation was shorter than expected, so David got right to work. “I made the heroic balance of violet, cosmetic-y makeup smells, cigarettes, and leather,” he says of his initial powder-room sketch. He experimented with different percentages, dialing up and down each element; the crowd favorite, which was his, too, went off to burn testing. “It was down and dirty,” he says—the fragrance equivalent of a swoosh.
THE DESIGN
The D.S. & Durga labels typically feature a spare, linear illustration, like that of a tattoo. (In fact, a tattoo artist sometimes turns up at the brand’s events.) “It’s a simple distillation of the idea—something that could be interpreted in a few ways,” says Kavi. Here, a mirror serves as the powder-room iconography: a medium for kisses, for cocaine, for gazing. “I loved the mirror as vanity because it’s VIOLET GREY and all about beauty,” says Kavi. A vintage book of Roy Lichtenstein’s late ’60s mirror paintings from this writer’s collection provided era-specific visual fodder. “A beautiful tie-in,” says Kavi, who paired her striped homage with a seemingly whispered font.
THE PLAYLIST
It’s a D.S. & Durga signature: “I always do a playlist,” says David, who’s also a musician. “It’s what you want to hear at the uptown soiree.” The ’60s are in full swing, and even the hoi polloi have got a taste for the “hippie shit that’s happening,” he says. Cher makes an appearance with “All I Really Want to Be.” Dusty Springfield and Bob Dylan get slots. The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “A Cool Million” sounds like a reference to the art on the townhouse wall. Nico on the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” is the breathy encapsulation of a VIOLET muse, singing, “She’s going to break your heart in two, it’s true.”
The D.S. & Durga founders David and Kavi Moltz at their Brooklyn studio.
