D.S. & Durga’s personalised online quiz, which aids in finding a scent from the cult American perfume brand, informs me I’m a ‘beach goth’. (The multiple-choice questionnaire asks if I prefer ‘Renaissance or Bauhaus’; ‘Marley or the Stones’; ‘tea, or coffee’, amongst other things).
This assessment feels correct. I moved to LA for the sun and the sand but somehow live in Echo Park – a world away from the ocean by the city’s standards. And on the day I meet D.S. & Durga’s co-founder Kavi Moltz – the ‘Durga’ to David Moltz, the brand’s, ‘D.S.’ – at its second Los Angeles location in Silver Lake which opened this month (December 2024), I’m dressed all in black, as is she. ‘I told David it’s funny he didn’t formulate the quiz results for ‘beach goth’ around me,’ she says. ‘But I never get it, because I choose tea over coffee.’
