# D.S. & Durga — Hylnds - Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake

> A cool, misty, mineral landscape-scent - wet stone, fog, lake water, lichen and damp heath - and widely regarded as the freshest and most accessible entry in D.S. & Durga's now-retired Hylnds sub-line

## Essence
A cool, misty, mineral landscape-scent - wet stone, fog, lake water, lichen and damp heath - and widely regarded as the freshest and most accessible entry in D.S. & Durga's now-retired Hylnds sub-line. Where most "aquatics" drift toward harsh masculine aftershave, this one renders genuine freshwater coolness and grey atmosphere, and is prized precisely for smelling like the outdoors rather than like cosmetics.
## Scent Profile
This is a study in cold, grey, wet greenness. The opening is salty, slightly herbal oakmoss over a sensation of sun-warmed rock that quickly turns aquatic. Reviewers consistently describe damp stone, fog, lichen, beechwood, bramble flower, marsh violet and the tart, lemony-spinachy tang of purslane (the catalog's "portulaca/pigweed") - one writer likened it to crushing fresh sorrel between your hands. The water note is fresh, not marine: "the glorious cool ripple of fresh lake and stream," not saltwater. The single most praised achievement is its texture: multiple reviewers single out a soft, grey, misty quality that is "the closest thing to real fog or cloud I've ever met in a perfume." It is green, cool, mineral, melancholy and austere; one reviewer who initially found it "cumbersome and pale" came to see it shimmering "like an oil film, darkly colorful, shifting" - stone-grey shot with moss-green and violet-blue. A faint camphorous lift and a soft citrusy finish appear late.
## Performance
Modest to moderate, and the chief complaint. Because the composition leans on light, airy, naturalistic materials, it does not project hard. Reports range widely - some find solid 6-8 hour longevity with sillage that drops to a skin scent after a few hours; others report it nearly vanishing within 30 minutes to an hour with low sillage. The unanimous verdict is that this is not a powerhouse, and several reviewers call the weak performance "inexcusable at this price point."
## Wearing Context
A warm-weather and outdoors fragrance par excellence - frequently named the best of the Hylnds trio for spring and summer wear. Unisex, leaning slightly traditionally masculine to some noses. It is mood- and setting-dependent: reviewers say it works best on a day off, outdoors, away from the office, and reads as "a very adult, decelerated fragrance" of "boggy coolness and strict seriousness." It evokes camping mornings, lakesides, and Northern moorland; one wearer described it transporting them straight out of a Bond Street boutique into "Wuthering Heights."
## Comparisons & DNA
Within D.S. & Durga, it sits beside the brand's other landscape-narrative scents - Mississippi Medicine and Freetrapper are named as kindred "lakeland hike for the nose" compositions, though neither smells quite like it. Within the Hylnds line itself, it is repeatedly contrasted with its 2013 siblings: Bitter Rose, Broken Spear (the most challenging/least accessible, built on embers, thyme, bitter rose, smelted iron and amber), Isle Ryder, and the whisky-collaboration Spirit of the Glen (made with input from The Glenlivet, evoking their 18-year single malt). Multiple reviewers note that while Spirit of the Glen is immediately striking but flattens over time, Pale Grey Mountain rewards patience. Reviewers broadly agree "nothing else is really like it."
## Reception
The critical favorite of the Hylnds line. CaFleureBon's reviewer named it "perhaps my favorite of the line," describing it as a chilly-but-never-gloomy gust through bramble and heather with a warm golden center "like a lighthouse in the sea mist," while judging that the Hylnds collection as a whole "never quite rises to fulfill its tagline of being an 'aromatic epic'" but succeeds as "a faithful, heartfelt poem." Now Smell This covered the line's launch and quoted the brand's florid mythological copy, with the comment thread split between enchantment and eye-rolling at the "pretentious" ad copy. Multiple collectors single out "Pale Gray Mountain Small Black Lake" as one of the few D.S. & Durga scents they actively like or own, and "Grey Mountain" is named by one as the only D.S. & Durga bottle they bought. The consistent shape of reception: artistically admired, atmospherically convincing, performance-limited, and expensive.
## Versions & Reformulation
Now discontinued. The entire Hylnds sub-line - launched 2013, inspired by the imagined myth-lands of Northern Europe (Celtic, Norse, Orcadian, Pict, Manx, Angle), and originally sold through Barneys New York - has been retired. Discussion suggests, somewhat ironically, that the line's very uniqueness and the cost/complexity of its materials worked against its commercial survival. No reformulation is documented; the scent simply left the catalog. The brand itself (founded 2007-2008 in Brooklyn by self-taught perfumer-musician David Seth Moltz and architect Kavi Moltz) has since moved upmarket: Manzanita Capital acquired a majority stake on January 31, 2024 - per WWD, "Manzanita Capital - whose portfolio includes Diptyque, Space NK, Malin+Goetz and Susanne Kaufmann - has acquired a majority stake in the Brooklyn-based fragrance brand D.S. & Durga," with 2018 investor Monogram Capital retaining a minority stake.
## Acquisition Notes
Discontinued and increasingly rare. Original retail was $180 for 50ml EDP - a price point reviewers found "difficult to stomach" given the soft performance even when it was current. Today it is a secondary-market or decant-only proposition (specialist decanting services stock it as "rare and discontinued").
## Notable Facts & Lore
- The fragrance's official copy is a prose-poem: "Up pale grey mountain, through silver fog, bracken, bramble, dry heather shrub... the small black lake keeps witch's ring, where the doomed king looked out to sea, Fenian blood in turf..." The scent is described as a "chilling air of wood, water, stone, and shrubs that grow on a mythic mountain in Armagh."
- David Moltz has synesthesia and describes "seeing" scents as color - a framing reviewers find apt for a fragrance so often described in terms of grey, green and violet hues.
- D.S. is David's initials; "Durga" (a Hindu goddess) is Moltz's nickname for his wife and co-founder Kavi.