...is what people can get away with. In this case, an $18K bar of soap. Soap is made from fat and a strong base (usually Lye) -- the two saponify and we have that wonderful soap.
Here is the story of an artist who made a bar of soap with a special fat and proceeded to sell it for $18,000.
From CNN/Reuters:
Bar of soap sells for $18,000
Perhaps the oddest piece of work at Art Basel is a bar of soap, displayed on a square of black velvet, purportedly made from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's fat, removed during liposuction.
Gianni Monti's work called 'Clean Hands' -- the title is a play on the name of an anti-Mafia group -- sold in less than an hour for 15,000 euros ($18,000) to a private Swiss collector, according to Monti's Galerie Nicola von Senger of Zurich.
And from Ananova:
Berlusconi's fat becomes soap
A bar of soap reportedly made from fat pumped from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has gone on display.
Artist Gianni Motti claims he made the soap made from fat from Berlusconi's liposuction operation.
It is part of an art exhibition in Basel, Switzerland, where anyone wishing to wash their hands with Berlusconi can buy it for £10,000.
The artist who put the soap on display, Gianni Motti, 47, claims to have acquired the fat from an employee of an elite plastic surgery clinic in Lugano in Switzerland.
Motti said: "Berlusconi had face lifting and liposuction operations in a clinic in Lugano, where I have good connections that provided me with some of the fat. It was jelly-like and it stunk horribly, like butter gone off or old chip pan oil."
Hat tip to BoingBoing
