Hmong textile show pops up at Walser dealerships in Minneapolis suburbs

This month, six Walser dealerships across the suburbs of Minneapolis are home to more than just sparkling new vehicles.

Ten mannequins with colorful dresses, sometimes beaded, sometimes mostly indigo, offer another greeting to visitors to the car dealerships.

May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and Walser Automotive Group's Asian Hmong Alliance is presenting "Threads of Tradition: A Hmong Clothing Showcase."

Wait, but why car dealerships?

"Growing up, my mother and my grandmother always said to us: 'Our history, our writing, is in our clothes,'" said Song Vang, president of the Asian Hmong Alliance and a manager at Walser. "So what better way to do it than to showcase a collection of our own clothes?"

The location felt relevant because this is where Vang works.

"Why can't we put this in the showroom floor so that our team, our employers, our co-workers and customers, they can just come in and see all this?" he said.

This month marks 50 years since the arrival of Hmong immigrants in America following the end of the Secret War in Laos, a United States CIA-backed 14-year conflict that ended in 1975. Hmong people were allies with the United States against communist forces in North Vietnam.

The dresses from across the Hmong diaspora come from the collection of Bee Vang-Moua, a director of Hmong language instruction in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department at the University of Minnesota.

She collected some of them during travels before the pandemic. But she struck gold during the pandemic, when mom and pop storefronts in China, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos moved online to sell things.

"It was my sort of silver lining during the pandemic," Vang-Moua said. "I just kind of shopped all day, in my house."

There's a heavily beaded dress adorned with pink, green, purple and yellow beads, along with crown-like headwear. It is in the Green Hmong Wenshan Style, from the Green dialect Hmong of Wenshan, China.

It looks nothing like the smooth purple, pink and yellow floral-patterned fabrics of the White Hmong of Hà Giang province in Vietnam. The clothing of the Black Hmong of Sapa in northern Vietnam is mostly darker hues because they use indigo dye.

"Hmong clothing reflects our resiliency," Vang-Moua said. "The further back you go tracking our journeys, to Hunan [and other provinces in China], before we migrated to Southeast Asia, the more silver we had in our clothing."

As the Hmong continued migrating, silver was eventually replaced with beads that could be traded and bought.

"Knowing these different types of things about clothing, you can track where the groups of people come from, what their dialects are," she said. "So clothing are languages in and of themselves — we just need to learn how to define or listen to them."

She wanted to honor the 50 years of Hmong people in America while also reflecting the diversity of Hmong culture moving away from the Minnesota connection of Hmong people as only refugees from Laos.

"The Hmong diaspora shows that we are a non-nation state people, and in the non-nation state foundations there has always been a quest for freedom and justice, to be free to be who you are — and also the ultimate diversity," she said. "That aligns with the ideology that we live here by in the U.S."

It's the first time Walser Toyota has hosted an art exhibition, let alone a showing of clothing from the Hmong diaspora.

"It's very unusual for us," said Dayna Kleve, director of diversity, engagement and foundation at Walser Automotive Group. "This is the anti-dealer kind of move…this has actually nothing to do with cars ― it's about supporting our employees and our connections to the community."

'Threads of Tradition: A Hmong Clothing Showcase'

Where: May 19–22 at Walser Hyundai Coon Rapids; May 23–27 at Walser Nissan Burnsville; May 28–31 at Walser Polar Chevrolet

Info: walser.com/blog