The glove began as a film editor's tool — a plain white cotton glove worn to handle film without leaving grease marks on the frames. When a 21-year-old Michael Jackson visited a Hollywood production company in 1980, he noticed it, asked a few questions, and left with one. Three years later, costume designer Bill Whitten covered it in 600 to 800 hand-sewn Swarovski crystals, and Jackson debuted it on his left hand during "Billie Jean" at the Motown 25 television special. The left hand specifically because vitiligo had already begun changing his skin there — the most dazzling object in pop history started as a way to cover something up. When asked why he only wore one: "wearing two gloves seemed so ordinary."

That logic — one is cooler than two, spectacle beats symmetry, the eye goes where you direct it — has held for forty years. Drake reportedly paid $120,000 for an original to anchor the cover of Iceman, marking his milestone of tying Jackson for the most number-one hits. The internet immediately split on whether it was homage or audacity — which is more or less the same conversation people have been having about Jackson for decades. The glove has always had that quality: so precisely engineered to catch light that it becomes difficult to look at anything else.