When Michael Jackson was laid to rest in September 2009, his longtime costume designer Michael Bush dressed him one final time in his all-time favourite piece of clothing — a white military jacket adorned with pearls and cream-coloured glass bugle beads, a recreation of the iconic jacket he wore when his sister Janet presented him with the Grammy Legend Award in 1993.

He wore black trousers encrusted in black seed beads, an 18-karat gold-plated champion belt adorned with semi-precious stones, a pair of sunglasses, and Lucite shin guards — originally designed for the opening number of his never-performed “This Is It” comeback tour — as a substitute for the white glove he had specifically asked Bush not to put on him.

At the private funeral at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, his children Paris, Prince Michael, and Blanket placed a bejewelled crown atop his golden casket.
But the detail that no one saw was perhaps the most moving of all. Before closing the jacket for the last time, Bush and his partner Dennis Tompkins quietly sewed a tiny crystal rhinestone Tinker Bell figure inside the left panel — so that she lay directly over Michael’s heart, forever.