Bay Rum

Bay Rum is the first scent I ever tried to make. Though I encountered the aroma of spicy bay colognes on the necks of old uncles and friends as a child, I never knew what I was smelling. Then in 8^th or 9^th grade when I was a little skaterat attempting 50-50 grinds of the sidewalks in Boston, I happened to walk into an old tobacco shop in Cambridge, MA. Besides the mountains of pipe tobacco, smoking ephemera, and fancy ciggies the shop had a section of old-world knickknacks. Amongst these fusty tokens of yesteryear, I saw old rustic bottles of colognes. There were a few different versions of something called Bay Rum. I sniffed. The aroma was familiar but exotic – conjuring visions of boats and far away isles. I dug it and saved up for a bottle. That one was in my “rotation” for the next few years.

What is Bay Rum?

Bay Rum’s history is something of a myth among the perfume world. I have heard it all started when sailors came to port to drink and whore. Supposedly months at sea wasn’t the best for their…um…olfactive wellness. They stunk and there were no perfume stores aboard the ship (fill in joke about the poopdeck). Instead, the sailors had stores of spices and rum. Someone realized they could soak cloves, bay leaves, nutmeg, mace, pepper, and the like in rum to make a rudimentary cologne. This spicy concoction caught on quick and small outfits of makers popped up in the Caribbean. Different blends emerged, and Bay Rum became its own genre. One that defined life at sea but appealed to dreamers and dandies everywhere.

The heart of Bay Rum is of course Bay leaves. The West Indian Bay Tree, Pimenta racemosa (also called Pimento) to be specific. This tree is actually a myrtle and differs a bit from the Bay laurel which we commonly use in cooking. Bay Rum’s aroma is so iconic at this point that when describing the extracts from Pimento leaf and berry, one is tempted to say, “they smell of bay rum.” It is a very deep aroma: dry, brown, spicy, and woody. I believe the secret to its enduring aroma lies in its “freshness.” We don’t always think of woody spice as “fresh,” but West Indian Bay has an almost watery shade, as if the humidity of the islands is trapped within its DNA. It is tonic and bracing like the aroma of witch hazel. I love.

If you are old enough to have smelled Bay Rum colognes in the 50-80s, you will notice that today’s versions are not the same. The regulatory on Bay has changed drastically in the last 20 years. Perfumers cannot use much of it at all in a fragrance. So we need to build around its core and bolster the beauty with other spicy woody citrus ideas.

The true origin of D.S. & Durga is actually a Bay Rum experiment.

In 2006-7, Kavi & I had been perusing bookstores for old manuals about plants. I wanted to do something with plants, but I didn’t know what. The back of these books always has a small section of outdated or rudimentary perfume, cologne, lotion & potion recipes. I came across one for Bay Rum in some odd hoary herball tome. It was the aughts and Brooklynites like us dreamed of urban farming, crafting, and living like a 19^th century citizen. My friends made jewelry, clothes, ties. Why couldn’t I try my hand at brewing batches of Bay Rum?

If you don’t know, Kalustyans is an Indian grocer in Curry Hill that, no hyperbole, has more spices, herbs, and ingredients than any single place I’ve ever seen in life. Even a spice market in Marrakesh or old Delhi doesn’t have everything they do. I purchased bags of bay spices, roses, and dried Persian lime. At home in Bushwick, I soaked these in rum. Weeks went by as the spirit became infused. I was delighted with the results. It smelled like those lovely Caribbean colognes I wore. I dabbed the wrist. A cooling sensation toned the epidermis. Alas, the glory lasted only a few minutes. Why didn’t the scent stay? The rabbit hole I spiraled down in search of an answer was the genesis of DSD.

Spices soaked in alcohol might smell cool but they have very little weight. They won’t last on the skin. I soon realized oils were needs – essential & absolutes. But they lacked clarity. Kavi & I had heard about synthetic aromachemicals, but didn’t know here to get them or how to use them. Kavi emailed a few places and one, Moelhausan, sent us some musks. It was the missing ingredient. Now all my ideas of natural formulations could be backed by something. Musks, ambergris molecules, and the like became the canvas to draw out whole worlds upon. Now we could build true perfumes – not kitchen concoctions.

In 2009 I finally made a Bay Rum that lasted. I used a beautiful bay leaf oil, Indonesian cloves, and nutmeg. I added flowers – linden & rose – to highlight the watery softness of bay. Sandalwood was an excellent base for island forming. The blond wood from Australia gave the spices chutzpah. Opoponax and ambreine too lent a sinewy amber to the woody, spicy base. I was excited to have a Bay rum in the line! We called it Barbados. It did ok. We were small, so it was hard to really gauge. As we made more perfumes, Barbados was disco’d and forgotten. Old time stuff was off the menu for most of 2014-2024, right? It was all athleisure, synthesizers, & California dreamin’ cosmic desertcore.

Rum Bay Rum

In 2022, a team member at DSD, Riley, (who enjoys all things menswear like me) brought up Bay Rum. He had heard about this old fume we once made, Barbados. My ear pricked up – was this the voice of the people? Could we be interested in old stuff again? The 20-year wheel was turning. I knew we had one bottle somewhere in my “archive”: a heaping pile of bottles in a metal drawer. We found Barbados and took her for a whirl. We enjoyed the deep sandalwood under spice. It felt new again. I was wearing more suits and ties again. Maybe all these colognes that I made for myself could work out there in the world at large. So, I updated the Barbados formula with newer, better materials, and more clarity – after 15 years I knew much more about how to make a formula sing the way I wanted it to. Said creation is in our new cologne line. It’s called Rum Bay Rum. Up until the very last second, I was going to call it Old Man’s Neck. But I went a more classic route.

Does the world need another Bay Rum?

If you ask the haters (who judge everything before they sniff), nay. But I do. I want one that lasts. I want my own version with just the right balance of spice, citrus, flower, and wood. There are thousands of recordings of Beethoven’s 5^th - Thousands of versions of famous folksongs. Do you drink the same kind of coffee every single day? It is so narrow to think a category of fragrance shouldn’t have multiple takes on the same theme. Spicy citrus Caribbean fumes in bottles covered by wicker and rope are the summer cookout of the perfume world. You rock them for the joys of a life out-of-doors near the ocean, even if you have to sit in your air-conditioned office hundreds of miles from the sea. Perfume, music, poems: these are dreams inviting you to enter. What’s wrong with that?