D.S. & Durga — The Carlyle
Essence
The Carlyle is a 2023 collaboration between D.S. & Durga and Manhattan’s Carlyle Hotel, composed by David Seth Moltz to translate the hotel’s longtime honeysuckle-scented soap into a wearable fragrance. It sits in the “hotel lobby” genre Moltz helped invent with Debaser - a polished, citrus-led floral over quiet woods, more cocktail-hour Bemelmans than tropical bouquet. Bright, modern, gender-neutral, and deliberately understated rather than head-turning.
Scent Profile
The opening is the loudest moment: zesty, sharp lime with bergamot and a green twiggy lift from neroli. Wearers call it “super limey - more zesty lime rather than sweet, juicy lime,” even a “jalapeno/lime cocktail vibe.” There is no juicy citrus sweetness here; it reads as a gin-and-tonic garnish rather than the cocktail itself. As that subsides, linden blossom and honeysuckle become the load-bearing accord - soft, slightly powdery white florals with the green-honeyed murmur honeysuckle gives without turning syrupy. The rose is faint and structural; many wearers don’t register it at all. This midsection is where the “Carlyle lobby” character lives: refined, mannered, vaguely old-money without smelling old-fashioned. The drydown settles into sandalwood, oakmoss, and hay. The sandalwood is creamy and quiet rather than buttery niche-sandalwood, the moss adds a dry green-grey undertone, and the hay lends a sun-warmed pastoral edge that keeps it from feeling purely like a cologne. The whole thing is linear-leaning - the citrus and the floral-woody middle merge rather than transform, and the drydown is more reduction than reveal. The signature pairing is lime and honeysuckle over soft sandalwood.
Performance
Performance is moderate. Longevity reads modest-to-decent and projection below-average, consistent with the broader D.S. & Durga reputation. One wearer found it “performs best in warmer weather. Almost immediately a skin scent below 60 degrees,” and the recurring note is that longevity and projection often disappoint on skin. Treat it as an intimate, close-to-skin EDP that rewards generous application and warm weather rather than a powerhouse.
Wearing Context
Best in spring and warm-weather months - the lime opening goes flat in cold and the floral-hay heart needs ambient warmth to bloom. It leans daytime over evening, business-casual over formal, brunch and gallery openings over nightlife, and is almost overdetermined for nice-hotel energy. The lime tilts it slightly more masculine-leaning than the florals suggest, and wearers note it works well on a man. Its social read is “polished, considered, not trying” - closer to a uniform than a peacock fragrance.
Comparisons & DNA
The clearest in-house reference is D.S. & Durga Debaser, Moltz’s original hotel-lobby fig-and-fresh fragrance and the spiritual predecessor here; both share a composed, slightly cool citrus-floral architecture, but The Carlyle leans more honeysuckle and linden and less green-fig. Wearers also reach for Kilian Roses on Ice as another rose-citrus cocktail concept, and place it in the same quiet neighborhood as the lighter end of Le Labo. No designer clone exists - the closest cheap analog is a high-quality honeysuckle-citrus body splash, which is exactly the comparison its detractors make.
Reception
Coverage is wearer-driven rather than critic-heavy, though Rachel Syme covered the launch for The New Yorker in March 2023. Reception is positive but soft: praise for the elegance, the lime-cocktail opening, and how literally it captures the hotel’s interior (“This genuinely captures the lobby of The Carlyle Hotel. Its polish, history and serenity”), and it has become a repeat favorite among house loyalists. The criticism is predictable - detractors find it reads like upscale honeysuckle hand soap or hotel amenities, which it essentially descends from. People who love that genre love it; others find it expensive for what it delivers. As a blind buy it is strong if you already like Debaser or refined citrus-floral hotel-lobby scents, weaker if you want projection or transformation.
Versions & Reformulation
A single composition with no known reformulations. It is sold only as a 50 ml EDP and as part of the Carlyle Hotel’s broader scent program, which includes shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and the original honeysuckle soap the perfume is based on.
Acquisition Notes
Listed at $190 for 50 ml at launch through both D.S. & Durga and the Carlyle Hotel’s online shop, where it is sold alongside the matching bath amenities. Decants and samples are widely available through standard niche services. Counterfeiting is low for a small-audience niche release, and no specific batch-code guidance is documented.
Notable Facts & Lore
- The fragrance grew out of the Carlyle Hotel’s signature honeysuckle bar soap, a quiet fixture for decades.
- D.S. & Durga extended that scent into a full perfume and amenity line.
- Moltz has said the Carlyle was already a favorite New York spot for him and Kavi, making it more fan project than commission.
- Rachel Syme’s New Yorker piece, “The Carlyle Goes Smell-o-Rama” (March 2023), is the most substantive press coverage.
- The 2024 Manzanita Capital acquisition of D.S. & Durga postdates the launch and is unrelated to this fragrance.