Beyonce’s very surprising secret weapon! 20 years after singer debuted her first solo album, ALISON BOSHOFF reveals tantalizing detail about her iconic cover shoot… and the dazzling outfit that launched her to stratospheric success
- Beyonce released her debut solo album Dangerously in Love in 2003
- The cover of the album – which saw her modeling a top made of sparkling chains with a pair of baggy worn-in jeans – became one of her most iconic photos
- Now, the photographer behind it has revealed a very surprising secret about the outfit that Beyonce, now 41, modeled for the shoot
Beyonce’s Renaissance world tour kicked off in Stockholm on Wednesday night – almost 20 years to the day since she began her incredible solo career with the release of the album Dangerously in Love.
That album, which helped her to win six Grammys and remains one of the best-selling of the millennium, famously featured the singer wearing a pair of dirty men’s jeans and a top comprised of rows of diamonds on its cover.
In the years since, Beyonce, now 41, has gone on to model a variety of high-end – and very pricey – one-of-a-kind ensembles from every imaginable designer brand. With an estimated net worth of close to $500 million, the singer – who is married to billionaire rapper Jay-Z – can afford to take her pick of the litter as far as fashion is concerned.
But, I can now reveal that when it came to finding the perfect jeans to don for the now-iconic album cover that launched her solo career, Beyonce eschewed designer labels and instead turned to a very surprising source.
Beyonce launched her solo career with debut album Dangerously in Love 20 years ago – and the photographer who shot its cover has revealed a very surprising secret about the iconic image (pictured)
Recalling the shoot, photographer Markus Klinko shared that the baggy jeans Beyonce, now 41, modeled in the image actually belonged to him – revealing that he stripped down to hand them over to the popstar to pair with her dazzling diamond top
Photographer Markus Klinko was behind that now-iconic image and told me this week that not only were those infamous jeans his own – but that he still has them in his possession.
‘Beyonce wanted to do something which looked like a famous picture I had taken of the model Laetitia Casta lying on a diamond spider-web so her mom had brought along the diamond top,’ Klinko told me.
‘But when it came to it Beyonce wasn’t happy because there was nothing to wear on the bottom half which she liked. I said: “Well, wear denim – that will work,” but she hadn’t brought anything.’
So, Klinko – eager to ensure that the photoshoot went off without a hitch, sartorial or otherwise – graciously agreed to hand over the very same jeans that he had worn to the set.
‘In the end I told her: “You can wear my jeans if you like, you might fit them,” and that was that,’ he recalled. ‘I had a spare pair to wear myself in the studio and she put my jeans on.’
He adds: ‘Once she got those jeans on and the diamond top she got very excited and she put her arms up. It was probably just 30 seconds of magic and I caught it and said to her: “Now I have the album cover.” We kept going for hours more but we both knew that we had got it already.
‘The power of the image was that it showed the artist that she was going to become.’
Dangerously in Love would prove to be the album that launched 1,000 lucrative solo songs for the pop sensation – debuting at the top of the Billboard chart and going on to sell more than 11 million copies worldwide – but it also ended up being the shoot that changed Klinko’s own life and career.
20 years on from that iconic shoot and Beyonce (pictured on the opening night of her Renaissance world tour on Wednesday) is now a global superstar who has her pick of the world’s most premiere fashions
The chart-topper has come a long way since her first days as a solo artist in the early 2000s (left), but it was the Dangerously in Love album that launched her to the stratospheric success she enjoys now (seen right on Wednesday night)
Klinko first met Beyonce when he shot her and her Destiny’s Child bandmates – revealing that he knew from the moment he saw her that she was destined for global fame
Less than two years after the cover debuted, Mariah Carey requested that Klinko shoot her for the cover of her album, The Emancipation of Mimi, telling the photographer that she wanted him to make her look just like Beyonce.
‘She wanted to look the way I had made Beyonce look,’ he revealed.
Britney Spears also followed suit – with Klinko describing the then-budding popstar as ‘adorable’.
Then, global beauty brand L’Oréal, which had Beyonce under contract for years, got in touch to enlist his services, admitting, he says, that they had never managed to get the chart-topper ‘to look the way she looked’ in his album cover.
The photographer, seen posing with the Beyonce cover, went on to shoot the popstar for a L’Oréal campaign after the beauty giant admitted that they had struggled to achieve the same ‘look’ he attained in the album shoot
Klinko ended up shooting the singer again, this time for a L’Oréal campaign, and he went on to photograph several other big-name faces of the brand, including Titanic star Kate Winslet.
While the photographer could not have predicted the stratospheric success his collaboration with Beyonce would result in – both for himself and the singer – he revealed that he knew from the very first moment he met her that she had something special.
During a shoot with the popstar’s former band, Destiny’s Child, Klinko says he turned to the stylist and told her: ‘That one in the middle, she has got something special – she’s going to be big,’ referring to Beyonce.
‘Yeah, I know,’ the stylist retorted – only for Klinko to later discover that she was in fact Tina Brown, Beyonce’s mother.
Meanwhile Beyonce and Klinko continued to keep in touch – and the photographer revealed that she ended up becoming one of his biggest celebrity collectors, buying ten prints of herself through his lens.
As for those jeans – Beyonce wore them out of the studio but later returned them to Klinko, who says he has them safely tucked away in a drawer, despite plenty of potential buyers coming out of the woodwork with offers to take them off his hands.
The photographer says he has no plans to sell the precious piece of fashion history – but admits he might be tempted… if the price is right.
‘If I sold them they would end up behind plexiglass somewhere. I mean if someone offered me a million I would consider it!’ he shared.
Klinko’s newest project is a series of images called The Angel Factory – a reference to his hero Andy Warhol. Produced in association with Erchonia lasers they depict the modern search for physical perfection.
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