I didn't realise I hadn't updated for 8 days. I apologise. Here's a long update.
This is an excerpt from one of my favourite books, "The King Of Style: Dressing Michael Jackson" written by Michael Bush, Mike's long-time fashion designer. You might have noticed I've added a few other excerpts from this book to the bible. Anyway.
MADE YA LOOK
Two and a half inches wide and eighteen inches long, the colour of the armband always changed. The world stopped to see what colour the armband was and what the fabric was made of. There was even a time when Nancy Grace, the legal commentator on HLN, spent prime-time national news hours trying to figure out what it meant. Michael was playing P.T. Barnum again, manipulating the press and teasing his fans with more "What does it mean?" and "Why did he change it?" It looked too important to not mean anything. Regardless of what it came to mean, the armband started as the solution to ensuring Michael could be identified with just one glimpse of his sleeve.
Coming up with the armband was an improvisation. Michael's riddles forced us to create instantly without thought. He taught us to not overthink, just do. He tapped the limitless "play" aspect of our minds.
Even his best friend Elizabeth Taylor knew this about him, loved Michael desperately for it, and did everything in her power to copy him. In 1995, Michael was to escort Elizabeth down the aisle at her wedding, which would be held outside on the grounds of the Ranch.
I was tailoring Michael's Levi's to death, because that's what he wanted to wear to the wedding. When I arrived at the Ranch the week before Liz was to marry Larry Fortensky, Michael was in the middle of a call.
"Here, Elizabeth wants to talk to you," Michael said, handing me the phone without warning. It wasn't the first time he'd done this to me, and I knew it wouldn't be the last.
I no sooner said hello than she demanded, "What's he going to wear to my wedding?" She rarely said hello when I spoke with her on the phone, and over the years I had come to expect her playful interrogations. I guessed Michael knew what information Elizabeth was trying to pry out of me, because when I looked frantically to him for guidance, he was cutting the air with his arms like scissors, mouthing, "Don't tell her. Don't tell her."
Elizabeth said, "He's telling you not to tell me, isn't he?"
"Yes, Elizabeth." And then she really caught me off guard.
"Is he going to wear a sword to my wedding?"
She knew whatever it was going to be, Michael's outfit would be over the top. I couldn't get a word in edgewise, and then...
"You tell that little bastard not to wear a sword to my wedding."
They were words fit for a sailor, but I had become accustomed to Elizabeth's trash talk. She loved vulgarities, and she worked them pretty well.
When I hung up the phone, Michael was relieved that the Levi's remained a secret.
"If she knows I'm wearing Levi's," Michael explained, "she'll want to wear them, too."
So we did a Renaissance coat, circa 1400s, with a sash across it to go with the Levi's (photo in the photo section) . But Michael left the sword at home.
