Bidding Opens on Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' Jacket and Princess Diana's Gowns

The red-and-black jacket Michael Jackson wore in the "Thriller" video is a catalog entry now, with a lot record the public can read. On November 9, Julien's Auctions opened bidding and published the full catalogs for the three collections it will sell at Rosewood Abu Dhabi from December 7 to 9: Michael Jackson: The Fashion Legacy, Princess Diana: Influence, Fashion, & A Royal Collection, and Pop Culture Legends. The December event itself was announced in August. What changed on Monday is that the objects — and most of their estimates — are on the table.

A jacket with a history

Julien's identifies the headline lot as the jacket Jackson wore in the 1983 "Thriller" video: black and candy-red calf leather, black panels, a trapunto-stitched collar, winged shoulders and a "Marc Laurent Paris" label. Costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis conceived the silhouette, building Jackson's frame up with exaggerated shoulders and the sharp V the black panels cut down the front. Inside the lining, in black marker, is an inscription to his longtime costume collaborators: "To Bush and Dennis All My Love Michael Jackson." A second signature sits on the sleeve.

Two jackets were made for the video, by the auction house's account. The other was shredded and deliberately distressed for the sequences in which Jackson appears as a zombie; the estate retains that one, and it has been shown at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The jacket in the catalog is the one from the passages where Jackson is himself. He later brought it to Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush and asked them to cut a pattern from it for his tour versions. Pattern-making usually destroys the original; when the two men managed it without harming the jacket, Jackson gave it to them, adding the inscription. That is Julien's account of how the most recognizable jacket in pop passed to the men who dressed him — and it is why there is no public price on it now. Julien's lists the estimate as available on request, the same treatment the sale gives the "Bad" tour jacket and the "Smooth Criminal" pinstripe suit among its more than 100 Jackson pieces.

The glove, and a pair of loafers with a letter

The rhinestone-covered white glove Julien's identifies with Jackson's 1983 Motown 25 performance — the night he first moonwalked in front of a television audience — carries the largest published Jackson estimate in the catalog: $600,000 to $800,000. The glove last came to auction in November 2009, when Hong Kong businessman Hoffman Ma paid $430,000 for it at Julien's, a record at the time. Executive director Martin Nolan, unveiling the pieces in October, noted that the house set world records for the Thriller jacket in 2011 and for the Motown 25 glove in 2009; both are back in its rooms this winter.

The quietest Jackson lot may be the most personal. A pair of black Florsheim loafers worn in the "Thriller" video and its rehearsals — "MJ Thriller Shoes" handwritten on the soles — is offered with a letter Jackson wrote to his choreographer, Michael Peters, on December 18, 1983, thanking him and giving him the shoes. Julien's estimates the loafers and the letter at $30,000 to $50,000.

Diana: two gowns, and the landmine lots

Princess Diana's collection is led by two evening gowns, each estimated at $200,000 to $400,000: a navy Catherine Walker gown Julien's says she wore to a 1995 CFDA event, and a midnight-blue Victor Edelstein silk crepe gown she wore at the Serpentine Gallery in 1993. The smaller lots carry the heavier history. Her Miss Selfridge driving loafers from 1997 — worn, the catalog notes, during her landmine walk in Angola — are estimated at $20,000 to $30,000, and a Ralph Lauren shirt from the same anti-landmine campaign at $10,000 to $20,000.

Prince, Banksy and a gauntlet set with real stones

Pop Culture Legends ranges wider. Prince's metallic-blue 1993 Cloud guitar, built by Kurt Nelson and played by Prince himself, is estimated at $300,000 to $600,000. Banksy's signed "Brace Yourself!," a Grim Reaper painting, carries the largest published estimate in the whole program: $2 million to $3 million. Kurt Cobain's leather jacket from the 1991 Reading Festival and the "Nevermind" photo shoot is estimated at $20,000 to $40,000, and Amy Winehouse's personal songwriting guitar the same.

The strangest object in the building may be the Infinity Gauntlet. It is a one-off replica, made by East Continental Gems by agreement with Marvel and Disney from Marvel's official design files, and set with six certified, untreated natural gemstones totaling nearly 180 carats, the stones certified by the American Gemological Laboratories. Julien's sells it as what it is — a replica, not a screen-used prop — and its estimate is also available on request.

Seeing them first

The highlights have been on the road since October: unveiled in Los Angeles on October 7, shown in Osaka, and displayed at Prince Jackson's Heal Los Angeles Foundation event, with a private New York showing at The Carlyle set for November 10. Later in November the tour reaches Bahrain, where Michael Bush will sign copies of his book King of Style II: Dressing Michael Jackson and talk through how the wardrobe was built. From November 29 to December 5, the highlights sit on public display in the lobby of Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental in Abu Dhabi, during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix week, before the move to Rosewood.

The sales run across three days: the Jackson evening sale on December 7 at 8 p.m. Gulf Standard Time, a Jackson day sale and the Pop Culture Legends evening sale on December 8, then the Pop Culture day sale on December 9 and Diana closing the program that night at 8 p.m. "These collections represent far more than iconic objects," Julien's chief executive Ken Citron said in the announcement. "They are tangible pieces of our shared pop culture history."

For now, every number in the catalog is a prediction. The estimates above are Julien's own, stated in US dollars, and they are not sale results; buyer's premium and the rest of a buyer's total cost sit on top of whatever the hammer says in December. What bidders are actually reading this week is the paper: condition reports, ownership history, the inscriptions and letters. The prices get decided in the room. More stories behind the objects live on the Provenance front.