What it’s actually like
Bobbles & Lace is a New England idea in an Arizona courtyard. The shop occupies Suite D of the cluster at 7051 East Fifth Avenue, the courtyard shared by The Herb Box and Berdena’s, and it brings to Fifth Avenue the format the brand built in the Northeast: a bright, well-merchandised room of women’s clothing, shoes and accessories, new arrivals every week, and staff whose job is to style you rather than ring you up.
The brand’s own description is three pillars, clothing, shoes and accessories, curated to cover everyday wardrobe needs with a few standout pieces mixed in. In practice that means knit tops, blouses, skirts, pants, dresses and coordinated sets in seasonal colors, a core collection of basics meant to be worn on repeat, and JBD denim as the anchor. Prices sit in the middle of the market, most pieces between about $40 and $130, which on Fifth Avenue makes it one of the more approachable clothing stops.
What distinguishes it from a mall store is the styling. Walk in with an occasion, a dinner, a wedding weekend, a week of meetings, and the staff pull a full outfit around it, top to shoes. It is a national brand, but the Scottsdale store is run locally under the franchise model the company adopted in 2022, and the service feels like a neighborhood shop’s.
What to buy
A pair of JBD jeans. The brand’s core denim, and the piece everything else on the floor is styled around.
A coordinated set or a dress. The fastest way to a finished look, and the category where the weekly new arrivals land first.
A core-collection basic. The timeless pieces the brand designs to be worn daily and carried through every season.
Shoes and an accessory to finish it. The third pillar, and the reason the outfit leaves the store complete.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The courtyard at 7051 East Fifth Avenue sits just west of the Bronze Horse Fountain at Marshall Way. Street spaces on Fifth are scarce; the public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal is the closest reliable parking, and the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is a flat ten-minute walk. The Old Town on foot note maps the loop and the Downtown & 5th Ave guide covers the district.
The store is open daily from 10 to 6, which makes it one of the more dependable stops on an avenue where many shops keep short or irregular hours. Weekday mornings are calm and the best time for a styling session; weekend late mornings are busy, when the Berdena’s line and the Herb Box brunch fill the courtyard. High season, roughly January through April, brings the visitor crowd. Iron Rose Boutique is a few doors away in the same courtyard for something edgier at a lower price, and Vintage by Misty across the avenue is the luxury end of the same afternoon.
Eat while you’re there
The courtyard does the work: Berdena’s is the tiny coffee bar with the line out the door, and The Herb Box is the patio brunch and lunch. Citizen Public House along Fifth is dinner, and Cartel Roasting Co. holds the far end of the avenue for a second coffee.
How it got here
Bobbles & Lace began on a sidewalk. Founder Lindsay Rando got her start selling fashion from a small cart on the streets of Los Angeles, and the success of that hustle sent her home to New England with a plan. In April 2008 she opened the first Bobbles & Lace in Marblehead, Massachusetts, combining businesses with her aunt inside an existing boutique. The aunt has since retired; the brand kept growing until Rando owned and ran eight storefronts across the Northeast, from Portland, Maine, to Westport, Connecticut.
In 2022 the company began franchising, offering independent owners the brand’s merchandising, styling and operating systems to open stores in their own cities. The expansion has been quick: the brand now counts 19 franchise locations and more than two dozen stores in all, from Boston and Charleston to Boulder, Savannah, Fort Lauderdale and Scottsdale. When the Fifth Avenue store opened is not documented in public sources, so this page dates it only to the 2020s expansion.
The address suits it. Fifth Avenue was cut in 1950 by artists from the burned-out Arizona Craftsmen building, and in the 1950s the street ran Saturday fashion shows for winter tourists; selling clothes to visitors is one of the oldest things the avenue does. The courtyard at 7051 is a modern take on the street’s original plan, small shops around a shared space, with coffee and brunch drawing the foot traffic.
A franchise from Massachusetts is not what Fifth Avenue’s founders had in mind, but the format it brings, a small room, a personal edit and staff who dress the customer rather than sell to her, is the same one the avenue’s owner-run boutiques have always used. The difference is scale behind the counter: weekly arrivals chosen for a national network, styled in a Scottsdale courtyard.