Fashion As A Love Letter: Filming With Brandon “BJ” Gray
Featuring Brandon Gray | An Amen Immersive Storytelling Series
“my family were all preachers”
“My father, my grandfather, my grandmother and grandfather on my mother’s side, all of them are preachers.”
Brandon “BJ” Gray does not speak about fashion without first speaking about faith, and Amen Immersive had to get the scoop on it. From his very first sentence, he situates his creative identity in legacy. His bloodline runs through the pulpit. His tone carries the rhythm of sermons, of choirs, of Sunday mornings filled with color and conviction.
Church was not simply a part of his upbringing. It was the classroom that taught him how to show up. The place where presentation was praise. The sanctuary where excellence became expression.
When BJ says, “I’m a proud Christian,” he is not making a statement of branding. He is declaring where his artistry begins. His faith has always been the foundation, and his family’s ministry was his earliest art direction. Every hat, every shoe, every pressed suit he saw in those pews shaped the eye he would later bring to design.
In the church, fashion has never been vanity. It has been visibility. A way to say, “God woke me up this morning, and I will dress like it.” That was his first understanding of design as language.
what fashion means to him
BJ entered fashion through frustration. As a teenager, he would walk into stores and see nothing that spoke to him. Nothing that looked like the person he imagined himself to be. Instead of waiting for someone else to make it, he decided to make it himself.
That moment of curiosity became calling. “There was a void,” he says, “and I realized I was the one meant to fill it.”
His creative direction lives inside the tension between tradition and innovation. He carries the refinement of his church upbringing and the realism of his Inglewood roots. Sundays taught him presentation, while his neighborhood taught him perspective. His style is both structured and spontaneous, an intersection where faith meets fashion and where boldness is treated as a virtue.
BJ designs with storytelling in mind. He listens to fabric like a musician listens to chords, waiting for texture to speak first. “The fabrics choose me,” he says to the Amen Immersive team, describing how he runs his hands across material until it tells him what it wants to become. That intuitive process is what makes his work feel both spiritual and cinematic.
Through his lens, fashion is not about trend but translation. He translates feeling into fit. Spirit into silhouette. Belief into boldness. And what he builds is not meant to be worn quietly. It is designed to speak.
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the art of testimony
BJ calls fashion his “love letter.” It is a message to his younger self, to his community, and to every person who has ever felt unseen. It is his way of saying, “You are worthy of expression.”
“The love letter is to the little kid in my head that was scared to be judged by the flamboyant colors he wanted to wear.”
In that single statement, he captures something sacred about the Black creative experience, that style has always been our form of testimony.
For generations, the Black church has treated fashion as a form of worship. Sunday’s best was not just an outfit; it was a declaration of dignity. In a world that too often stripped away pride and presence, Sunday was the day to reclaim both.
During segregation and the Jim Crow era, church was often the only space where Black people could express elegance freely. Clothing became armor, self-respect turned outward. Women wore crowns, church hats layered with feathers and veils that spoke of royalty and resilience. Men shined their shoes until they reflected the sanctuary lights. Every stitch said, “I belong here. I am somebody.”
BJ carries that same energy forward. When he plays with gradients, when he pairs bold colors with traditional cuts, when he balances flamboyance with grace, he is honoring a lineage that has long turned fashion into faith.
His pieces are sermons without microphones. Each look is a verse about legacy. Each client he dresses becomes part of a larger congregation, people reclaiming confidence through color and silhouette.
Will you be at the Amen Immersive Experience? Reserve your seat now.
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