Row after row of elaborate Hmong jackets, robes and headwraps fill Billy Vang’s brightly lit shop in Maplewood Mall.
The hand-stitched embroidery tells a story, for example, a pattern of yellow and red rows symbolizes crops. Each section of the store includes clothes for a different group — including the White and Green Hmong.
But these beautiful clothes aren’t for the living, they’re the final set of clothes Hmong people wear on their journey to the afterlife.
Vang opened Billy’s Hmong Shop last year, moving to Minnesota to launch the business. Before that, he had worked in North Carolina serving as an interpreter and cultural translator between Hmong families and funeral home staff.
A funeral of a friend’s relative two decades ago launched him on that journey. He said the funeral home staff weren’t familiar with Hmong traditions.
“I felt like there was something blank,” he said. “They still don’t know about the culture.”
As Vang started working more hands-on with Hmong families, he noticed that some younger people did not know about certain traditions, such as the importance of Hmong funeral garments.
In Hmong culture, funeral garments are worn so the deceased person’s soul can return to their ancestral homeland.
“We believe that there’s something more beyond death, that you go back to your ancestor’s land,” Vang said.
Without wearing the same funeral garments as their ancestors, the soul won’t be accepted, he said.
Vang, 41, moved to Minnesota in late 2024, and opened Billy’s Hmong Shop at Maplewood Mall. The clothes are all sewn by hand, and made from natural fibers like cotton and hemp. Vang does some sewing himself; more intricate patterns are sewn in Laos.
The store also sells other items used at funerals, such as spirit money, blankets to go inside caskets, and tools, like crossbows to ward off harm.
He said he considered moving into a space in local Hmong markets, such as Hmong Village in St. Paul, but decided to open it in a mall to expose more communities to Hmong culture.
“When dealing with death and traditional clothes like this, not a lot of cultures get to see it because it’s usually within the family and the community itself,” he said. “But by exposing it in the mall, it actually brings more people in. And people come in and they’ll ask me, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ ‘What’s this?’ And I love to talk, I love to educate.”
This year, Vang partnered with North Memorial Health to provide funeral garments for patients who die unexpectedly or who are in end-of-life care. He also trained some hospital staff on how to care for Hmong patients in a culturally responsive way. For example, Vang said the head is a sacred part of the body in Hmong culture, and staff should avoid touching it when possible.
“I just feel really honored that I get to partner with them to build that bridge between the hospital and the Hmong community,” he said.
Jessi Kingston, the system director of North Memorial Health, said the need for funeral garments for Hmong patients was identified internally among staff. She started doing research and came across Vang’s shop online. Kingston said North Memorial obtained a grant of $25,000 to go toward the funeral garments.
The garments are available at hospitals in Robbinsdale and Maple Grove, as well as North Memorial’s in-home end-of-life care at no cost to patients.
Vang said many Hmong people acquire their funeral garments long before they die. Traditionally, a woman receives her funeral garments from her parents when she gets married. But sometimes people die suddenly, and they or their families might not be able to access their garments.
That’s when the partnership with North Memorial comes in, he said. North Memorial keeps on hand a selection of clothes from Vang’s shop. Vang said ideally a person is wearing the garments when they take their last breath, to bring them with them to the afterlife.
“[Families] don’t want their loved ones to wear a hospital gown into the next life,” he said.
Kingston said North Memorial’s Robbinsdale hospital is a Level 1 trauma center, meaning some patients may have extensive injuries that lead to death. Making the garments easily and quickly available for patients in those moments is critical.
“We want to remove a barrier for them and have these available in a very meaningful way during an end of life process,” she said.
Vang said North Memorial is the first hospital he has partnered with, and he hopes other health systems take similar steps. He said he’s not aware of any other shops locally that exclusively focus on Hmong funerals.
Looking forward, Vang recently moved his business to a larger space in the Maplewood Mall, and is considering opening up another shop in California, where he grew up. Death is a sensitive and difficult subject, but Vang said he’s glad to talk families through it.
“It’s tough, but I feel honored to guide them in any way,” he said.
