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.
The album, which earned her six Grammys and remains one of the best-selling of the millennium, featured the famous singer on the cover, wearing a pair of dirty men’s jeans and a top made up of rows of diamonds.
In the years that followed, Beyonce, now 41, has modeled a variety of high quality – and very expensive – one-of-a-kind ensembles from every designer brand imaginable. With an estimated net worth of nearly $500 million, the singer – who is married to billionaire rapper Jay-Z – can afford to be fashion savvy.
But I can now reveal that in the search for the perfect pair of jeans for the now-iconic album cover that launched her solo career, Beyoncé eschewed designer labels and instead turned to a very surprising source.
It’s been 20 years since Beyonce launched her solo career with her debut album, Dangerously in Love – and the photographer who snapped the cover revealed a very surprising secret about the iconic image (pictured).
Photographer Markus Klinko recalled the shoot and shared that the baggy jeans Beyoncé (now 41) showed in the picture were actually his – and revealed he took them off to give them to the pop star and pairing them with her dazzling diamond top
Photographer Markus Klinko was behind this now-iconic image, and he told me this week that those infamous jeans weren’t just his own – they’re still in his possession.
“Beyonce wanted to do something that looked like a famous photo I took of model Laetitia Casta lying on a diamond spider web, so her mom brought the diamond top,” Klinko told me.
“But when it did, Beyoncé wasn’t happy because there wasn’t anything she liked to wear on the bottom half.” I said, ‘Well, wear jeans—that’s fine,’ but she hadn’t brought anything.”
So Klinko – who was keen to ensure that the photoshoot went smoothly, fashion or otherwise – kindly agreed to hand over the exact same pair of jeans he wore on set.
“In the end I said to her, ‘You can wear my jeans if you want, maybe they’ll fit you,’ and that was it,” he recalls. “I had a spare pair to wear to the studio and she put on my jeans.”
He adds: “When she put on the jeans and the diamond top she was so excited and raised her arms. It was probably only 30 seconds of magic and I caught it and said to her, “Now I have the album cover.” We continued for hours, but we both knew we’d already made it.
“The power of the image was that it showed the artist what she would become.”
Dangerously in Love would prove to be the album that spawned 1,000 lucrative solo songs for the pop sensation – it debuted at the top of the Billboard charts and sold more than 11 million copies worldwide – but it ended up being that The shoot that changed everything about Klinko’s own life and career.
20 years after that iconic shoot, Beyonce (pictured on the opening night of her Renaissance world tour on Wednesday) is now a global superstar with a choice of the world’s most exclusive fashions
The chart-topping hit has come a long way since her early days as a solo artist in the early 2000s (left), but it was the album ‘Dangerously in Love’ that gave her the stratospheric success she’s enjoying now (seen at right, Wednesday night ).
Klinko first met Beyoncé when he shot and killed her and her Destiny’s Child bandmates – and revealed that he knew from the moment he saw them that their world fame was at hand
Less than two years after the cover was released, Mariah Carey asked Klinko to photograph her for the cover of her album The Emancipation of Mimi, telling the photographer that she wanted him to make her look just like Beyoncé.
“She wanted to look like what I made Beyoncé look like,” he revealed.
Britney Spears followed suit – Klinko described the then-rising pop star as “lovely”.
Then global beauty brand L’Oréal, where Beyoncé was signed for years, reached out to seek his services, admitting they’d never been able to make the chart-topping star “look like she did “. his album cover.
The photographer who posed with the Beyoncé cover went on to shoot the pop star for a L’Oréal campaign after the beauty giant admitted they had a hard time achieving the same “look” he shot for the album had scored
Klinko ended up photographing the singer again, this time for a L’Oréal campaign, and went on to photograph several other well-known faces from the brand, including Titanic star Kate Winslet.
While the photographer couldn’t have predicted the massive success his collaboration with Beyoncé would have for both himself and the singer, he revealed that from the moment he met her, he knew she was something special .
During a shoot with the pop star’s former band, Destiny’s Child, Klinko said he reached out to the stylist and told her, “There’s that one in the middle, she’s got something special — she’s going to be big,” meaning Beyoncé.
“Yeah, I know,” the stylist replied — only that Klinko later found out she was actually Tina Brown, Beyonce’s mother.
Meanwhile, Beyonce and Klinko kept in touch – and the photographer revealed she eventually became one of his biggest celebrity collectors, buying ten prints of herself through his lens.
As for those jeans, Beyonce wore them outside of the studio but later returned them to Klinko, who says he tucked them safely away in a drawer, though numerous potential buyers showed up offering 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 Plexiglas somewhere.” I mean, if someone offered me a million, I’d think about it!’ he shared.