A reupholstered chair preserved by Bethany Binkley and Grace LePage. (Scarlet Hearth)
It all started with a chair.
When Grace LePage walked into a consignment shop in St. Paul in December 2024, just after a recent move to the Twin Cities, she wasn’t looking for a business partner.
She was there to pick fabric for a chair. However, the exchange would set off a journey that would eventually lead to Scarlet Hearth, a new sustainable fashion boutique now rooted in the heart of Northeast Minneapolis.
Scarlet Hearth, 945 Broadway St. NE, founded by stylist and designer Bethany Binkley and hospitality artist LePage, is more than a clothing store. It’s a shared practice in beauty, curation, healing and ethical living, one they hope will reflect the surrounding Northeast Minneapolis arts community and helps shape its future.
“We originally looked at the downtown Stone Arch area,” LePage recalled. “Then the North Loop. However, those places felt exclusive and expensive. Like they wanted to squeeze as much money out of us as possible.”
“We found an artist-driven community,” LePage said. “Everyone who found out what we were doing asked how they could be part of it. We immediately knew we could build something here that was going to be authentic to us.”
The Scarlet Hearth is located in the former Land O’ Nod Mattress factory building, now called the Broadway. The store’s name is itself a nod to storytelling: When naming the store, Binkley had been reading “The Scarlet Letter” and LePage was exploring mythology. “As a woman who faces impossible odds and perseveres to create a happy life … in the end, she goes back and makes it a safe community of women,” Grace says. “That’s the story we want to live.”
At Scarlet Hearth, every piece of clothing is curated with a deep reverence for personal expression. “Bethany wasn’t just buying clothes for herself,” LePage explained. “She’s much more of an art collector. Her choices were … about the art of what we wear.”
The clothes mainly come from secondhand sources — Poshmark, Depop, Vestiaire Collective — and are chosen for quality, uniqueness and emotional resonance. “It’s not about defining beauty,” LePage said. “It’s about the feeling of beauty. We’re learners of other people’s definitions of beauty… how it ends, how it manifests in their life.”
Part of that mission includes education. “When you don’t know how to sew, a tiny tear in your clothing becomes a reason to throw it away,” LePage said. “Bethany is teaching me to mend clothes. It’s really incredible to give something another 10 years of life.”