Heimie's Haberdashery owner Anthony Andler shows off one of the handcrafted leather handbags for sale in his downtown St. Paul store on Friday, Nov. 2, 2018. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

A collection of hats at Heimie's Haberdashery. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Keith Allen shines David Brooks' shoes. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The main display space at Heimie's. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Barbers Michael Sierra, left and Andrey Rojas cut hair. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)



Andler presses a customer's slacks. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Heimie's Haberdashery in downtown St. Paul on Friday, Nov. 2, 2018. Store owner Anthony Andler is is about to buck recent history and double the store in size. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Anthony Andler sells suits priced at $325 to $1,300 suits in downtown St. Paul, and business — believe it or not — is good.

His Harris Tweed sports coats sail in from the Shetland Islands — think of Sherlock Holmes or the country gentlemen on “Downton Abbey” — but the hand-crafted leather handbags are his own creation. In fact, being a merchant-artisan has been in his bloodline since at least the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Downtown St. Paul — once known as the merchant capital of Minnesota — doesn’t sport much retail these days beyond restaurants, convenience stores and skyway boutiques.

But Andler’s high-end men’s clothing store is about to buck recent history and double in size.

His 17 employees will grow to 20. And his clothing store — already a destination for haircuts and shoeshines — will add cigars, pricey coffees and guided hunting tours to its roster.

Andler, the proprietor of Heimie’s Haberdashery on Wabasha and St. Peter streets, plans to knock down the back wall behind his iconic barber shop and grow Heimie’s to 9,000 square feet. The store will expand into space previously occupied by the St. Paul Riverfront Development Corporation.

On two floors, he’ll add room for a barista, fine coffees, new mezzanine-level administrative space for guided fly-fishing and hunting tours, a gun library, cigars and pipe sales, and a groom’s lounge.

Andler even plans an enclosed smoking patio — a nod to the concept of Heimie’s as a near-exclusive social club, a throwback to a more genteel time, and a destination for the tactile senses in an ephemeral era of Internet clicks and discount web sales. Related Articles The beer industry looks for ways to help black brewers

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“They used to call St. Paul the ‘city of merchants,'” said Andler, who grew up in the shadow of two Russian-Jewish tailors and clothing retailers — great-grandpa Heimie Andler and grandpa Ralph Andler. “My grandpa never had a barbershop. I added the barbershop. It was important for experiential shopping. We’ve gone, as a society, from bricks to clicks. You can order retail right to your door. To compete, we had to offer experience — atmosphere, environment, sight, sound, smell, sensory stuff — and relationships.”

By June, Anthony Andler hopes to celebrate the latest incarnation of a St. Paul tradition that began with Heimie Andler’s West Seventh Street tailor shop in 1921.

That’s where the hands-on skills great grandpa learned in the old country helped him and other Jews form a small, tight-knit immigrant community.

With Heimie’s perseverance as a tailor and, later, Ralph Andler’s post-World War II men’s clothing store on Robert Street in mind, Anthony Andler sold his downtown art gallery — Artist Mercantile — to an employee in 2004 and switched gears.

Heimie’s Haberdashery opened in the historic Hamm Building on St. Peter Street that same year, but a passerby could be forgiven for assuming it had come to town in 1915, at the same time as the steel-framed, marble-floored building it sits in.

Felt fedoras and smoking jackets line walls overlooking pants and sweaters. Alterations are done by four master tailors — all Hmong women — on the premises.

There’s also on-site shoeshining, steam presses, cuts and shaves from master barbers and more tweed, cashmere and leather crafts than a Humphrey Bogart impersonator could shake a fedora at. Suits, which occupy about one-fourth of his existing storefront, will soon span half of it, and the other half of the existing space will targeted to wedding attire.

“We haven’t run a sale since we’ve been in business,” Anthony Andler said. “Suits are really the driving force of our business. It’s what moves everything else.”

Andler credits the city of St. Paul with providing “gap” financing help when he opened Heimie’s in 2004, but he isn’t asking for any form of public assistance for his expansion. He’s working with Sunrise Banks, which has helped him grow across almost 15 years as a clothing retailer.

Still, there’s a few things that keep him up at night. His Hmong tailors aren’t getting younger, and their sewing skills aren’t necessarily passed onto the next generation.

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“It’s not problematic now, but it is going to be problematic in the next 10 years,” Andler said. “We should all be able to gain skills, have a job, save money and then help the next generation do the same. It’s the old American dream story — coming from nothing and making something. What a topical theme. It’s what the country was founded on.”