Photos: Chris Emeott
New menswear shop blends two beloved stores.
There’s a famous saying: The suit makes the man. But what about the rest of his wardrobe?
For more than 100 years, famed haberdashery Hubert White was the place in the Twin Cities for businessmen to fill their closets. When it closed in summer 2023, many, including Edina’s Pete Glerum, wondered where they could go next.
“I loved Hubert White. When they closed, I looked in my closet and thought basically all my clothes—away from my Saturday jeans—the vast majority came from Hubert White over the last 15 years,” Glerum says. “I said to my salesman, ‘You sort of dressed me over the last 15 years, and I feel like I’m losing a friend’ when it closed.”
That love for Hubert White is what Kevin Luedke is counting on. A former Hubert White employee, he is now at J.H. & Sons, which opened in the Galleria in December. He brought along salesman Chuck Simpkins and tailor Dinh Nguyen.
Dinh Nguyen has a set of devoted clients who have moved with him throughout the years from Neimann Marcus to Hubert White and now to J.H. & Sons.
“Our opening weekend was just full of existing clients,” Luedke, manager of J.H. & Sons, says. “Pete came to see Dinh.”
And Glerum says he could feel the excitement in the store on opening weekend. “It was better than I expected,” he says. “[The store had] a great range of clothing and price points, high-touch service [and offered] suiting down to jeans.” Yes, even those Saturday jeans.
However, J.H. & Sons isn’t quite what Hubert White was. It takes the best elements of Hubert White and modernizes them with a little help from another well-known Minnesota menswear store. It’s all thanks to Jeff Halberstadt, whose father James “Jim” Halberstadt opened Halberstadt’s in St. Cloud in the 1970s. Halberstadt inherited the shop from his father, and it’s now called J.H. & Sons. The Galleria is its newest location, but it has shops in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Omaha, Nebraska. Clients from St. Cloud and Sioux Falls also poured into the new Edina shop. Luedke says it’s the ideal way of continuing on and being there for longtime customers of both stores.
“The heritage is rooted in tailored clothing, but our focus outside of tailored clothing is elevated casual,” Luedke says. “So taking that classic sport coat, softening it, putting a hoodie underneath. Still tailored, still dressy, but something you could wear during the day and then transition at night—office to evening. Full made to measure in shirts, sweaters, custom sport coats, custom outerwear. We definitely have that component, but we also have a lot of other garments throughout the store that allows us to do a pretty good job of outfitting somebody just off the rack as well.”
A colorful array of collared shirts are a fitting example of the shop’s elevated casual collection.
And that balance is exactly what Josh Howard needs. He, like Glerum, was a former Hubert White client. “My father-in-law had been a longtime client, and I had my first job downtown and needed a suit. He introduced me to Chuck Simpkins,” Howard says of the legendary salesman. “I could walk in and run into Chuck, and he would immediately say, ‘Oh, we got this piece in. It’d be perfect for you.’ He could just direct me right away to the new products, which you don’t really get in many other places.”
He says he appreciates the ability to have a combination of custom and ready-to-wear options. “Pretty much every suit I owned over that 20 year period was from [Hubert White],” Howard says. “I can’t really buy off the rack. I have a body type that needs a more tailored fit, and I’ve always really liked their combination of suits and sportswear and everything they offered.”
Glerum is looking forward to the future. “It’s a continuation of that level of interaction and service that I’ve known to trust at Hubert White—I know Chuck, and I know Kevin will continue on with that. And Dinh as the tailor. They’re just top-notch,” he says. “I know there’s been some competing products in the Cities where people say, ‘Oh, this is the new place to go.’ But I’ve just always stuck with Hubert White. I thought they were great. [J.H. & Sons] fills a place in the western suburbs for this type of experience.”
J.H. & Sons
3595 Galleria; 612.274.7166
Instagram: @jhmenswear.edina
Instagram: @kevin.jhmenswear
