Rosetta Roastery and the Kopi Luwak body scrub

The heights of Luxembourg: Mont Saint Nicolas

The height of luxury is a concept that drastically changes form, depending on the gender, age, class, or IQ of the person you ask.

Factors including who you ask, how hungry they are, and the length of time since they last had a bubble bath combine to give you some bizarre answers to the question “what is the height of luxury?” And in turn, the beauty, hospitality, and homemaking industries shape their products according the randomly comprised wishes of capricious lux-lusting coteries coursing after life’s next emotional peak.

It wasn’t too long ago that the Rosetta lads were confronted by this very question, and pushed for an answer, presented the concept of a Kopi Luwak body scrub.

After all, what could be more luxurious than pooh-covered seeds, coarsely ground, and liberally applied to your person?

Nothing right? Exactly.

Of course, having no access to said cat poop coffee, we were certain that this experience would remain on our bucket list forever, never to be realised. In either bath or shower.

Kopi Luwak? Or Ouma's secret stash of peanut brittle?

The true-life story

But oh contraire, mon frere! What’s this? A short while after Rosetta Roastery’s Rob Cowles had been musing on his unattainable body scrub dream in an online interview, our compadres from The Haas Coffee Collective on Rose Street in Bokaap (very stylish vendors of said Kopi Luwak coffee) dropped off a little gift – their first edition Kopi Luwak body scrub! While I can’t endorse the use of a coffee body scrub to anyone who thinks sparkly white bathrooms should stay sparkly white, I will say that the experience causes some genuine emotional peaking.

Half the Haas: Glynn Venter (sans Francois Irving) and the Haas coffee range.

Now I hear you all muttering, “That’s pretty weird.” And I would agree with you, had I not done a brief online search, which yielded some “luxury” products deemed comprehensively “normal” by both the people buying them, and the companies selling them. As you’ll see from the products below, “weird” is absolutely relative. As are inverted commas.

A small selection of choice items:

1. Mother’s Milk soap: Thus far no brand has guaranteed that you can choose the actual mother who will contribute her finest efforts to your bar of soap, but the fact that folk are out there making this stuff means that this option can’t be too far off:

2. Hasma Dessert: We’re into frogs as much as the next guy. It’s not unlike us to take a few minutes out to watch one hop harmlessly by. But somehow the Chinese Hasma dessert leaves a bad taste in our mouths (figuratively, of course, as we’ve never actually tasted it). Made from the dried-out fat around the fallopian tubes of our amphibian friends, the fat is soaked in water (till it swells to look like tapioca) and served with rock sugar.

3. Whale vomit perfume: It’s a logical fit really. We all know how romantic it is to lean for a kiss from our loved one and catch that unmistakable scent of sick. Sweet! Neatly disguised at “ambergris” on products like “Oceans” by Nautica, it really is just whale puke collected from the ocean and added to perfumes and colognes to give it that authentic “fresh from the sea” scent.

4. Placenta beauty cream: It is not uncommon for the human placenta to be highly honoured in various cultures around the world. What should be uncommon is to take said placenta and rub it on your face. Alas, it isn’t. If it’s placenta cream you want, your options are endless. Choose your brand, animal, or scent…and when you’re done browsing, rub it on your face.

Leave-in seaweed conditioner: Old Gregg's top beauty tip for getting that "fresh from the ocean" scent.