Fragrance house

DSH Perfumes

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz began designing perfume in 1991 while studying art, and DSH Perfumes was founded in 1994. Hurwitz initially planned to become an art professor and painter, but treated perfume as an art form from the outset. She and colleague Sarah Horowitz later started their own perfume company and helped pioneer the U.S. artisan-perfume movement. DSH Perfumes’ creative identity is grounded in visual-art principles, perfume history, and olfactory art, with concept perfumes and projects that connect fragrance to paintings, exhibitions, and other visual-art subjects. The brand operates under Parfum des Beaux Arts, LLC, and is based in Boulder, Colorado, where its Essense Studio is used for bespoke fragrance creation and consultations. In 2019, DSH Perfumes introduced Heirloom Elixir, a numbered limited-edition program developed from Hurwitz’s ongoing creative ideas and a conversation with CaFleureBon editor Michelyn Cingue. That year, Hurwitz received an Art and Olfaction award for Colorado, a fragrance created with American Perfumer.