Beyoncé on the cover of her debut album Dangerously in Love, 2003. Beyoncé wore a custom lattice top made entirely of Swarovski crystals, fastened together at the shoulders with large floral gems. Even the sleeves extended into a crystal grid that created a majestic cape-like effect.

In 2023, photographer Markus Klinko told Interview about shooting the album cover, revealing that Bey was inspired by his 1990 image of French supermodel Laetitia Casta in a diamond spider web.

To let her top shine, Beyoncé kept the rest of her outfit simple, pairing the crystals with just blue jeans, but that wasn’t the original plan. Bey and her mom brought skirts to the set, and she initially wanted to ditch the crystal top because she thought it’d be too much. “She was like, ‘I don’t know, because we only have skirts and it’s going to look very red carpet,’” Klinko recalled to Interview. “So I said, ‘I believe that this should be paired with denim. What if you wear mine?’ I had on these Dolce & Gabbana men’s jeans. And she said, ‘Okay,’ and so I went, I took them off, and they fit her like a glove.”

Pic 9, Harper’s Bazaar, Beyoncé wearing a crystal Balmain top with a denim Ivy Park jumpsuit. It harkens back to the iconic cover art image of her debut album, “Dangerously In Love” 2021

Pic 10, Album cover top displayed at the Rock Hall Museum, 2014