This shop is good fun. Fitted out like an old apothecary shop, with endless shelves of intriguing brown bottles, Nantucket Natural Oils takes a more subtle than usual approach to enhancing the smell of the human body.
They do not use alcohol in their perfume, an ingredient that they claim makes that stuff you have on your dressing table smell too strong and then wear off too fast. "Perfume is supposed to attract not offend" proclaims John Harding in his store brochure. Well, John, let me say for the record I agree completely. There's something unnatural about that typical perfumey-cologney odor that clings about men and women when they go 'out.' Often, it reeks. Often, it simply smells bad. I told David, who was working in the store the day I came in, that I didn't want to know what a guy smelled like unless I was about, er, two inches away. He agreed, and applied a micro-drop of a house blend called "Rain," I believe, on my arm. It smelled pretty darn good, and wasn't overpowering.
Besides being very knowlegeable about perfume and oils, David is a great guy who works for Natural Oils in Maui most of the year but is spending the summer at the Nantucket location this year. Please say hi to him if you venture in, and ask him where to eat.