Beyoncé’s 2003 debut solo album “Dangerously in Love” solidified her spot as an R&B icon and the Queen Bey of the music industry.
The 41-year-old’s record cover was photographed by Markus Klinko and featured the flawless singer rocking a diamond-covered top and jeans as she posed in front of an icy blue background.
However, the “Crazy in Love” songstress initially hated the web-like shirt that was draped over her bare skin, according to Klinko, who noted that the inspiration behind the record’s jacket photo came from a snapshot he captured of model Laetitia Casta, titled “The Web.”
That 2000 photo showed the French model lying on a spider web that was crafted from jewels, with Casta sporting a silver, thread-like minidress that wrapped around her body.
“She said she really loved that image and if we could do something like that, just smaller, on her. And I didn’t really know how to interpret that,” Klinko recently told Insider of Beyoncé’s interest. “That image is very blue, mainly blue, dark blue. When she said it, I didn’t really immediately know what to do about it.”
When it was time to take the photos, Tina Knowles-Lawson, Beyoncé’s mom and then-stylist, had brought in the shiny, diamond-encrusted top — and Klinko “immediately recognized it as an opportunity.”
He gave the garb to the Grammy winner to try on, but the former Destiny’s Child frontwoman was not a fan.
“She said she didn’t like it,” he said.
“She didn’t think it worked because her mom wanted to pair it with these long skirts. Beyoncé said, ‘This is going to look very prom or red carpet and I don’t want to do that.’”
However, he reached a solution when he realized that skirts were not the way to go to make the cover memorable.
He suggested that denim was the best route and lent Beyoncé a pair of his own pair of jeans that he was wearing at that very minute — so the “Dreamgirls” star pulled on Klinko’s trousers because she hadn’t brought any of her own.
“I think there’s a moment of improvisation in all of my shoots. I like to come in with a very clear concept and a plan of what I want to do. But my hope is always that something better will happen,” Klinko said.
“Beyoncé contributed a lot because she worked it,” he said. “She worked a piece — that’s not easy to do. She found the exact right movement. That wasn’t my idea to put the arms up. That was her idea, and I don’t even know if it was an idea. It was her instinct. And I knew: ‘That’s the cover.’”
Even two decades after the album dropped, Klinko still gets asked by fans where they can purchase the same pair of blue jeans that Beyoncé wore on the record cover.
But he’s choosing to never, ever give them up.
“She gave them back to me and she said, ‘Thank you so much and please don’t sell them on eBay,’” he joked.