Using techniques from Marie-Antoinette's day, and all natural ingredients, Francis Kurkdjian – one of France's top perfume creators – spent 18 months researching and blending the fragrance.

"The big challenge," he explained, "was that there was no one document saying 'This is the perfume Marie Antoinette wore'."

"Back then, people didn't have just one perfume – partly because it was impossible to preserve a fragrance for any length of time or to reproduce exactly the same scent more than once," Kurkdjian explained.

"But written documents tell us all about the queen's tastes. So we recreated a perfume that we know she could have worn." To do so, he used a contemporary encyclopaedia of perfume-making, written by the royal perfumer Jean-Louis Fargeon, supplier to Marie-Antoinette, and uncovered by the historian Elizabeth Feydeau.

It provided a treasure trove of insight into the ingredients most used in the queen's day, their botanical properties, distillation methods and the art of composition.

"We chose flowers we know she wore – we know for instance that she was very fond of light floral notes, especially roses, but disliked heavier, animal scents fragrances," Kurkdjian said.

"We tried to understand her mindset – her constant quest for freedom, she was a deeply romantic figure."

Which scent to accent
Between the queen's arrival at the French court in 1770, aged 14, and her execution for treason by revolutionaries in 1793, Kurkdjian "had to decide which moment to immortalise".

"We chose Marie Antoinette as a young mother, during her years at the Trianon," a small chateau in the palace grounds where she increasingly retreated during her later years. "That was when she seemed most human, least concerned with appearances."

The result combines notes of iris, rose, cut jasmine, tuberose, and orange blossom, with woody touches of cedar and sandalwood, and base notes of Tonkin musk and grey amber, according to its description by the Chateau. It is called "MA, Sillage de la Reine", which means "In the Wake of the Queen".

8 000 euros a piece
Perfume collectors and Marie Antoinette fans from Europe, Asia and the United States have already pre-booked three of the crystal flasks – at 8 000 euros a piece – and 200 of the small vials, priced at 350 euros, on the Internet. Kurkdjian, who took on the project free of charge as a historical and scientific challenge, says the high price reflects the cost of using natural materials – as opposed to synthetic ingredients. Ten kilogrammes (22 pounds) of iris flowers, for example, cost as much as 50 000 euros.

All proceeds will be used to cover the cost of a travel chest that once belonged to Marie Antoinette – classed as a national treasure – which was acquired by the Chateau last December for 350 000 euros.

The Chateau says there are no plans to produce any more of the perfume, although it has set aside a couple of vials as a gift for the US director Sofia Coppola, whose glam-rock film on the rebel queen's life – shot on location at Versailles – it cites as one of the inspirations for the project.

Like Coppola, Kurkdjian says he intended the perfume to be "a key to help people understand what the era was like". But to do so, he realised, would require a degree of artistic licence since a 100-percent faithful recreation would be too cloying for modern tastes.

"When it comes to visual arts or music, people can adapt to things coming from a different context. But with smell there is a physical barrier."

"People then didn't wash as often as we do. They ate gamey meat that we would now find repulsive – it was a completely different smell environment."

"I didn't want people to think it smelled bad, so I lightened up the head of the perfume – by adding a touch of bergamot. But I didn't take anything away." "In the same way, Coppola uses rock music because people couldn't imagine Marie Antoinette partying to the sound of a minuet."

Image: A flask of "MA, Sillage de la Reine".