An American musician (D.S.) and an architect (Durga) joined forces in 2007 to make handmade colognes. What began as a hobby making aftershave for friends (they quickly realized none of their friends shaved) turned into small batch perfumes and colognes. The Brooklyn-based husband-and-wife duo bring romanticism back to fragrance. They reference the classics but with a modern sensibility.

Handcrafted exclusively in-house using premium sourced ingredients, a single spritz will last you all day. Their method of combining flowers, herbs, spices, oils, and plant extracts dates back to the pre-industrial cottage industries of North America. David Seth Moltz is the nose. He’s self taught. Kavi, his wife, channels her architectural eye into the packaging and illustrations for the line.

We have been wearing Boston Ivy for a couple of years now. When autumn arrives, we reach for it. It’s that kind of scent. Masculine* yet light bodied, unashamedly pungent, reminiscent of the Boston Harbor. In D.S. & Durga’s words, it’s “a memory of Boston in the ‘80s. Where green moss and ivy grew next to I.R.A. graffiti and fresh clover was salted by the sea.” In ours, it’s Cambridge in a bottle.

*Moltz recognizes we consider scents to be ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ because we’ve been socialized to think that way. Violet, for instance, was classically unisex, but now it’s considered feminine because it’s a floral. A damn shame, really.