The Letter Lottery (The story of Michael's CTE shirts)
"Michael's desire to stand out was accompanied by savvy. He knew marketing and storytelling and performance better than anyone, and those skills told him that once a mystery is no longer a mystery, people lose interest. To stay relevant, it is critical to remain a question mark. So, part of our responsibility was to keep adding fuel to the fire- extend the mystery by introducing new reasons for people to ask 'Why?' and inventing new tests to see if anyone would notice. In the early 90's, we created some new shirts for Michael, a' la the China silk phase we had entered thanks to 'Dirty Diana,' and upon showing him the first one, Michael said, 'That's a really good shirt.' But then he just pointed to the top of his shoulder, like he was dusting Jiminy Cricket off his epaulet, an ornamental shoulder piece. He didn't say anything more. I knew it meant we needed to put something there. Something was missing. Dennis and I started with the old reliable- a crest- but then our gut said stop. Then Michael suggested, 'Put a letter up there.'
'What letter?' It seemed like a logical question at the time, although looking back I should have seen Michael's cryptic response coming a mile away.
'I don't know. Pick one.'
He wanted us to pick a letter and put it on the epaulet of his shirts. So now he'd wear an armband and a letter. We went back to the studio and took one of Michael's fedora Billie Jean hats, threw the 26 letters of the alphabet inside. I drew one letter: C. But that didn't feel finished. So Dennis drew the next letter: T.
Hmmm. C-T. Still, it didn't feel right. Go with your gut. So, we pulled one more letter: E.
C-T-E
It meant nothing. And that felt right."
- Michael Bush, from his book "The King of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson".
If you have requested a fact to be put in this book, don't worry, I'll be getting to all requests next.
