Last summer some 70,000 visitors to an evening festival at the palace at Versailles took in a concert of a different sort. Issuing from 16 machines tucked beside the fountains was an explosion of scented bubbles in Louis XIV's favorite fruits -- melon, pear and strawberry.

This "olfactory installation," as its creator calls it, came courtesy of Francis Kurkdjian, a 39-year-old bespoke perfumer with a ballerina's physique and a prominent Roman nose whose fragrances start at 8,000 euros (US$10,500) for two 2-fluid-ounce bottles.

Kurkdjian spends three to 12 months on one perfume -- "People wait," he sniffs -- and whips up 12 to 15 scents year. (Some customers buy more than just two flacons, though Kurkdjian won't reveal total volume figures.)

He demands half his fee in advance to cover the cost of materials. With five customers on his waiting list, the backlog works out to about a year, he says. Meanwhile, Kurkdjian also contracts his nose to Takasago, a Japanese chemical company that makes scents for the likes of Lanvin, Ferragamo and Kenzo.

While sales for the US$39 billion global fragrance industry are flat, big players like Cartier, Guerlain, Jean Patou, Roja Dove and Lyn Harris are piling into the bespoke business -- at dizzying price points. Cartier charges a reported US$75,500 for 20 ounces; Guerlain starts at 35,000 euros (US$47,330) for 60 ounces.

Kurkdjian holds his own with lots of theatrical marketing. In 2003 he literally created the smell of money (a U.S. dollar bill) for the French writer and installation artist Sophie Calle, part of a retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris. In 2006 he laced his scents into a sorbet of strawberry, orange flower and banana for award-winning French pastry chef Christophe Michalak. Last year he again shot bubbles--this time into the entrance of the French embassy during the Fête de La Musique, an international music festival.

Denied entry to the Ballet School of the Opera de Paris at age 13, Kurkdjian later found his calling at ISIPCA, a trade school for perfumers in Versailles. He designed his first perfume -- Le Male (Jean Paul Gaultier's best-selling masculine fragrance for the last nine years) -- at age 25 as a nose for hire. In 2001 Kurkdjian mustered the courage and savings to go the bespoke route after a friend asked him to donate some perfume to a charity auction to benefit AIDS research; Kurkdjian raised $10,000 for his nose instead.

Kurkdjian's big show with clients starts with an hour-long phone call to find out what fragrances they wear, the occasion they want it for and what type of smells they like. (He calls it a "perfume map.") One American client wanted the scent of his white Bentley. When another aimed for a whiff of vetiver grass, Kurkdjian asked him to specify which type of vetiver - from Haiti, China, Java or Bourbon.

Next, Kurkdjian schedules a face-to-face meeting, to which he brings his traveling lab -- a 45-pound, green leather steamer trunk of ingredients, from rose and jasmine oils to cloves and ambergris (rare sperm whale secretion). In all, Kurkdjian uses some 1,200 substances to whip up his scents. Prices range from US$9 a pound for lavender oil to US$10,500 a pound for ambergris.

Not that mixing perfume is high science. Armed with a dropper, bottles, blotters and a small scale, Kurkdjian keeps mixing ingredients until he hits just the right note. He sends samples that customers can test out for a few weeks; if they aren't happy, he tweaks the recipe and they try it again--as many times as it takes.

"You don't do chemical reactions in the lab, you do the assemblage," says Kurkdjian. "The ingredients are like the colors on a palette." What if a client gets fed up and bails on the purchase along the way? "We would bill for only half the amount--if such a thing should occur."

Snobbish as he comes off -- and fickle as the retail masses are -- Kurkdjian isn't looking down his nose at them. This September he plans to launch a new fragrance line--at US$110 to US$250 a bottle.