Beyoncé
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‘This was for the cover of Beyoncé’s Dangerously in Love album. She thought pairing the diamond top with a skirt would look too red carpet. But she hadn’t brought any jeans – so I gave her mine’

I was a classical concert harpist before I became a photographer. I studied at the Paris conservatoire and signed with EMI Classics. Then, in 1994, aged 33, a hand injury prevented me from playing. I made a quick decision to do something else and that’s how I became a photographer – despite the fact I had never owned a camera. I had read a book about photography but that was it. I sold all my harps and spent $100,000 on photo equipment before ever taking a picture. I locked myself in my apartment, got a store mannequin and just started practising with the same intensity I had done with the harp.

In the beginning, because I had been a musician, I wasn’t interested in shooting musicians. I only wanted to shoot sexy models. My dream was to shoot for Playboy. But just a few years later, it was the music industry that reached out to me. I didn’t want to do it but my agent was screaming at me to, saying: “You’re crazy!”

I shot Beyoncé for the first time in 2000 for Vibe magazine, when she was part of Destiny’s Child. I knew she was a superstar right away. She walked in and I said to her mother, Tina, who was styling the shoot: “This one in the middle here, she’s going to be a huge star.” Tina looked at me like: “Yeah, we know.” After that, things really started taking off with music shoots.

In the gallery you'll find pictures from the Renaissance tourbook.

Beyoncé has a new collaborator: French luxury fashion house Balmain.

The singer, who appears on the April cover of Vogue France, announced on Friday that she has co-created a Balmain haute couture collection with Olivier Rousteing, Balmain’s creative director.

Renaissance Couture by Beyoncé x Balmain includes 16 couture outfits dedicated to the 16 songs on Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning Renaissance album.

“Thank you @olivier_rousteing and @balmain for bringing RENAISSANCE to life in couture,” Beyoncé wrote on Instagram. “Designing alongside you was freeing — thank you for allowing me to celebrate the human form, to take artistic risks, to push boundaries and to freely express myself.”

“To the @voguefrance team, thank you for trusting in our vision and sharing it with the world,” she added.

NYLON talked to ten artists, designers, and photographers responsible for some of the year’s best album covers to learn how Beyoncé’s mirror-covered Renaissance horse came together, Steve Lacy’s delightfully weird collage for Gemini Rights was assembled, beabadoobee’s whimsical Beatopia was conceived, and more.

Beyonce’s Renaissance horse by set designer Nicholas des Dardins

How did you get involved with Beyoncé's Renaissance?
Not the most exciting story, but producers reached out to me based on previous work of mine. Not entirely sure what previous stuff of mine got me the gig.

How did you conceptualize covering the horse with disco balls?
The horse came about working with her and her creative team. Originally we were going to do a giant 8-inch disco ball that was already in production when we shifted ideas. The job from the start was under an immense time crunch, so for a while I was hesitant about the horse. Install was Monday after Easter weekend and the concept came about on Thursday night. We negotiated down to just doing a saddle covered in disco ball mirrors, but me and my studio manager knew it would be so worth it if we could pull it off, so we scoured the greater Los Angeles area for an available life-size horse. We waited until we knew it was possible to pull it off before we let her and her team know that we were going to deliver the full horse that inevitably became the cover.

What was the biggest challenge you faced bringing the horse to life?
Time. We had very little. Thankfully, we discovered a secret source for old fiberglass horses, as many of the current manufacturers had months-long wait periods. We found and picked it up that day and immediately started to work on covering it in 1/4" glass mirror pieces. The mirrors were coming in shipments from different vendors to get enough in time. Me and the rest of the team were literally waiting for the mail person and ripping the boxes open and continuing the task as the mirrors trickled in.

Following the July release of juggernaut album Renaissance, the superstar stars in Tiffany & Co.’s newest campaign, “Lose Yourself In Love.”

As part of the announcement, Bey posted a video clip soundtracked to the album closer, “Summer Renaissance,” that showcases various pieces of Tiffany & Co.’s jewelry collections.

But it’s only a hint of what is to come. The luxury jewelry company confirmed in a press release that a film centered around “Summer Renaissance” will launch in October 2022 and that it “embodies the carefree, joyous spirit of the album as a whole.”

“I am honored to continue the partnership with Tiffany and Co. and to explore even deeper how beautiful our connections are, when we truly celebrate the relationship and importance of love that we have for ourselves as individuals,” said Beyoncé of the campaign.

Helmed by three-time Grammy-winning music video director Mark Romanek, the “Summer Renaissance” film is inspired by New York City’s Studio 54 era. Choreography is by Emmy-nominated artist Fatima Robinson.

“Lose Yourself In Love” champions the joy of being one’s unapologetic self and is a call to embrace the power of possibility.

"Renaissance" is now available on all platforms! Listen and download here.

Beyoncé marked the start of a new era in characteristically impactful style, with her return to the cover of British Vogue, and an indelible fashion story, captured by Rafael Pavarotti, that incorporates everything from Harris Reed headdresses to Schiaparelli Haute Couture. As anticipation around her new album – the aptly titled RENAISSANCE – builds, take a closer look at the shoot, a “vision of glittering retro-futurism” conceived by Edward Enninful and his superstar friend, referencing the tropes of club life from the mid- ’80s to the millennium, with co-styling by Marni Senofonte.

Vogue released more photos from Beyonce's photoshoot for the July issue.

A Sunday evening in Los Angeles; a drive into a discreet set of gates for a candid dinner with Beyoncé.

Two days before I find myself here, at Beyoncé’s home, we had convened in West Hollywood with photographer Rafael Pavarotti to make a fashion story. New music is coming – a thrilling abundance of it, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. In what might be her most ambitious musical project to date, the culture-shifting, Grammy-dominating Queen Bee of all she surveys has trained her considerable artillery on America’s musical soundscape of the late 20th century. Do I need to add there is also a little mystery at play?

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, a writer of excellent and lengthy texts, had taken to messaging me as we brainstormed the direction of her Vogue shoot together. A fashion fantasia spun from the tropes of club life during the last century’s final quarter. Mirror balls, light boxes, headdresses? Of course. A horse on the dance floor? Certainly. A motorcycle for her to adorn in Junya Watanabe leathers and Harris Reed & Roker boots? Why not. B wanted to play with fashion like never before, and as we swapped references (from the 1990s garage scene to ’80s excess), talked hair and beauty, and got to know her team, a vision of glittering retro-futurism began to take shape.

Check out the latest promotional photos for Ivy Heart.

Tiffany & Co. released another promotional photo for the "ABOUT LOVE" campaign.

New promotional picture for the Tiffany & Co. "ABOUT LOVE" campaign has been released.

ABOUT LOVE tells a love story of longing, reunion and a bond that transcends space and time.

A new picture from the Tiffany & Co. photoshoot has been released.

Tiffany & Co. released more promotional photos with the Carters. The couple also graced the cover of the WWD magazine.

In the gallery you'll find more promotional photos for Ivy Park Rodeo. As usual, Beyonce is sending out boxes of clothing with a special note to friends and celebrities.

Beyoncé's Evolution

After more than two decades in the spotlight, Beyoncé has become much more than a pop icon. She’s a cultural force who has routinely defied expectations and transformed the way we understand the power of art to change how we see ourselves and each other. But at 40, she feels like she’s just scratched the surface.

Women born at the dawn of the 1980s were among the last generation to live an analog life and the first to see themselves reimagined in digital. Beyoncé’s childhood coincided with the rise of home-recording equipment—video cameras, stereo systems that let you record your own voice, keyboards that let you find whatever sound you wanted, personal computers to synthesize it all. The girls before her had mirrors and the echoes of the trees and magazines with cartoon approximations to reflect themselves. Her generation was the first to regularly experience the dizzying accuracy of playback. It could be a destabilizing force; there’s your voice as you think it sounds, and then your voice when it comes back to you, after you’ve hit Record.

Beyonce posted a video with an overview of the recent Grammy Awards.

At Sunday night's Grammy Awards (March 14), Beyoncé officially broke the record for most Grammy wins by a female artist, or by any singer, when she took home her 28th Grammy for Best R&B Performance for her song "Black Parade." Apart from that, the singer won Best Music Video for "Brown Skin Girl," as well as Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for her collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion for "Savage." Congratulations!

A Friday In September.