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Scent Fit For A Queen
Look like this and you can wear whatever perfume you want
The French have always loved perfumes, it seems - not least during the ancien regime, when idiosyncratic bathing habits and a miasma of foul everyday odours made it necessary to dip practically everything you came into contact with in rich scents.
Of course, this kind of portable air conditioning was only for the rich.
The price was a mere pittance if you were a member of the court of king Louis XVI in the eighteenth century.
Now, with inflation, the cost of a small bottle of the perfume, based on the fragrance once used by queen Marie-Antoinette, sells at the Palace of Versailles for 350 euros ($463 or £236).
A 'limited prestige version crystal bottle' of 25 centilitres will set you back 8,000 euros.
The perfume contains scents including rose, iris, jasmine, orange blossom and sandlewood.
Your correspondent has been informed by vendors at the palace that the new product is selling better than tickets to the hall of mirrors. While our mole wishes to remain anonymous, but says that most buyers are of Japanese origin.
The success of the Sofia Coppola film 'Marie-Antoinette', has also helped sales.
But the only question that remains is whether this is the scent that the queen decided to wear on her cheeks before her death at the guillotine in 1793.
