We recently connected with Jamal McCray and have shared our conversation below.

Jamal , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

Have you ever had the feeling that you were put on earth to do something great? Well…that’s kind of the legacy I wish to leave behind. I don’t think I’ve often content with simply living, working, getting married, having kids just to die, and there’s nothing wrong with that but anytime I can get my hands on something where I’m able to put a creative twist on it, I want it to have depth and dimension. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the best by any means but grandeur in the affect it has on people and it’s gravitation pull. Whether it’s clothes or my books/writings…I want people to look back on what I’ve made and discover time and time again the endless treasure I’ve buried within. To those who embark on the journey I’m sure they’ll find countless gems. Hopefully if I play my cards right, I won’t have to wait until I’m dead to get my flowers, instead I want to create a beautiful garden while I’m yet alive where people can visit anytime they want.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Ah, yes, well it all started one afternoon, I don’t quite remember what I was doing, probably playing the game at that time. When my mother walked into my room with a torn pillow, the stitching had come undone. I believe I stopped what I was doing because I was so intrigued as she showed me how to stitch it back together. It didn’t take long for me to take what I learned and apply it to one of my favorite sweaters that had a hole in it, by cutting up another old shirt of mine into square patches then sowing it onto my sweater. Low and behold, everyone thought it was the coolest thing and my creativity blossomed. I tried to make trees out of brown and green fabric, and a sun with yellow, blues for rain, whites and grays for clouds…you get the point.

As for my books, I began writing poems and short stories in the note section of my iphone, I was a helpless romantic so I daydreamed of scenarios with whatever young lady had my attention at the time. From there it evolved into an awareness of the beauty of nature around me and I started to write about human nature through wisdom I found in trees, bees, the wind, all these beautiful things I used to take for granted, but it’s like they were trying to tell me a message and with my pen I was their scribe.
I remember sitting on my bed hanging out with some friends when I got a text from someone who saw a black history writing contest and told me I should enter into it. I waited until the last day, and submitted my entry after writing it on my phone. Sure enough a few days later I got an email back congratulating me on winning the contest. That’s when I figured, I might be on to something with this writing thing.

From there my writing evolved alongside my faith in God. With romance, nature, and my Christian beliefs I began to see how much they intertwined one with the other by the perspective in which I saw. Then it was as if romance spoke to me in a language I could comprehend not of merely emotional desire, but of a love much greater than I could comprehend; of nature—wisdom never ceasing, ever unfolding, and how ultimately everything in my world pointed back to Jesus.

With my brand as I mentioned prior, I create designs with up-cycled fabrics, usually of some metaphor or idea displayed as simply as possible, and that’s what I believe gives it its potency and stops people in their tracks. I tell stories through pictures and words. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how many pictures can you imagine with a thousand words? A lot of people have told me my clothes have become their favorite thing to wear and i think it’s because of the feeling of wearing a story, something alive and moving, taking you to another place. I used to say with my clothes, I don’t do anything but bring them to life. As you can see my clothes are inspired a lot by nature, because that’s what I often write about, everything is interwoven and extensions of each other.

Then came painting, where I was able to combine pictures and words. I was able to make my words as appealing to the eyes as an image and now that ‘word’ became worth a thousand words. One thing I’ve found conceptually is that nature transcends nationalities, ethnicities, language barriers, etc..a tree is a tree no matter who you are or where you live.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Originally making clothes was reserved for my own wardrobe, it began to grow when I started getting requests from other people to make them something. People would come up to me and say “if you had that for sale I’d buy it..” and so the gears started ticking. Around the same time I got invited to my first pop-up event for my friends band Foots X Coles. For that event I began working on a collection of clothes and that began the process of me coming up with set designs; I made one small, one medium, one large, and one extra-large, not to the exclusion of anyone but since it was only me working, I narrowed it down. For each design I made one in each size and moved on to the next one. I got bored making the same design because my mind was already brainstorming the next idea. Something inside of me wanted to outdo the last creation I made and they never seemed complete or finished but I suppose that plagues artists everywhere.

I started getting invites to do pop ups all over the DMV, the more I got accustomed to what people gravitated to and what people were interested in seeing I began to readjust and improve my designs. Initially I would go days without selling anything, and that was rough. That didn’t last forever though, and soon came days where I nearly sold out of everything. I decided to quit my job and pursue this full time. Initially it was rough but once you hit rock bottom it’s only up from there as they say. It was just a matter of overcoming the fear of failing. I had a great support system, I would not have been able to do anything without the love and support of my family! Deciding to leave my job to pursue my interest was for me the best decision I ever made

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think if I didn’t believe in myself, in the face of adversity I would have given up, but I believed in what I was doing. When you believe in what you are doing it’s going to attract the right people. Apart from me creating the designs, where I got to was by no other than the grace of God, and everyone he sent to lend me a helping hand, whether it was places to set up my tables on Monroe Street because Tim let me set up my tables outside of his up-cycled furniture store or even the beautiful studio my friends Patrick and Kels let me work out of and my parents initially letting me use the gym room as a place to create art. It was a culmination of many people helping me along the way that allowed me to get to where I got to.

My reputation came by means of me remaining humble and working hard. Gifting sets you before kings, but character is what keeps you

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.Jamccray.com
• Instagram: J.A.McCray
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jamal.mccray?mibextid=LQQJ4d