What it’s actually like
There are two reasons to visit 7144 East First Avenue, and the second one is the building. The first is Fashion by Robert Black, the vintage couture house that Robert Black and Doreen Picerne run behind a door that most people walk past. Black formerly owned the Ford Robert Black modeling agency, and the archive inside is what a lifetime in that business produces: roughly 2,500 square feet of red-carpet couture, special-occasion designer pieces, daywear, accessories and the category the owners call historic treasures, from the 1940s to the present, every piece in like-new condition.
The shop is largely by appointment, and that is how it should be seen. Vintage at this level is not a rack you flip through; it is an archive you are walked through by someone who knows which house made what in which season and what it will do on a body. Bring an event, a decade and an honest measurement and the owners will do the rest. It is priced like couture, because it is couture.
The second reason is the room. This is the landmark White Hogan building, home from 1950 until August 2006 to the silver shop where Kenneth Begay and the Kee brothers pushed Navajo silver toward modernism, and one of the most important addresses in the history of Native American jewelry. When the White Hogan closed after 56 years, the building sat empty, and by most accounts it was around 2008 that Fashion by Robert Black moved in. The White Hogan guide tells that story; standing in the space with a 1960s gown on a hanger is the way to feel it.
What to buy
A red-carpet gown. The archive’s reason for being. Ask for the era, then let the owners edit; the pieces that photograph best are rarely the ones you would pick from a rail.
A special-occasion designer piece. A cocktail dress or a suit for a gala, a wedding, a Barrett-Jackson week party, in a condition no ordinary vintage shop can match.
Daywear from a great house. The underrated end of the stock, and the part you will actually wear more than once.
Accessories and historic treasures. Bags, jewelry and the one-off pieces with a story, the most affordable way into the archive.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
First Avenue between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue has almost no street parking, and an appointment-based shop is not a place to arrive flustered. Park free in the Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard, a flat five-minute walk east, or the Fifth Avenue lots near the canal to the north. The Old Town on foot note maps the walk and the Old Town guide covers the district.
Timing follows the gala calendar. High season from January through April is Scottsdale’s event season, from the auction and car-show parties of Arizona Car Week in January to the spring charity circuit, and appointments in those weeks should be booked well ahead. Scottsdale Fashion Week is the other natural moment. Summer is the quiet season, when the archive is calmest and the owners have the most time; the appointment model means the heat is irrelevant once you are inside.
Eat while you’re there
The block is one of the better places to eat in Old Town. Arcadia Farms Café, a few doors west on First Avenue in a vintage house, is the garden-patio lunch that suits a couture appointment. Arcadia Farms Cafe further along is the shaded lunch patio. Hula’s Modern Tiki toward Brown Avenue is the casual option, and the Sugar Bowl, pink since 1958 at Scottsdale Road and First, is the period-correct dessert for anyone who just bought a 1950s dress.
How it got here
The building came first, and its history is the reason the shop’s address matters. The White Hogan Silver Shop moved from Flagstaff to Scottsdale in 1950, and over the following decades its Navajo silversmiths, above all Kenneth Begay, now called the father of modern Navajo jewelry, and the Kee brothers, remade Native silver in a modernist register: clean lines, sleek forms, subtle textures, flatware and hollowware alongside the jewelry. It was a contemporary of the Kiva Craft Center on Fifth Avenue and part of the same 1950s moment when Scottsdale became the place where Native design met the national market. The shop closed in August 2006 after 56 years and three generations of Native silversmiths, and the landmark building on East First Avenue went dark.
Robert Black arrived from a different world. As the former owner of the Ford Robert Black modeling agency he had spent decades in the fashion and modeling business, the kind of career that leaves a person with a network of designers, stylists and closets, and with an archive. With Doreen Picerne he opened Fashion by Robert Black in the White Hogan building; sources cite an opening around 2008, and by most accounts the shop followed the silver shop’s closure by a couple of years. The concept was vintage couture at the top of the market: red-carpet gowns, special-occasion designer pieces, daywear, accessories and historic treasures from the 1940s to the present, sold in like-new condition and largely by appointment, in roughly 2,500 square feet.
It was the right shop for the 2000s and 2010s Scottsdale. The city’s event calendar had become one of the densest in the West, from the January auctions to the spring galas, and its resort and second-home population had the occasions and the budgets for real couture. What it had not had was a source for the vintage version, the archive-grade gown that no mall could stock. Old Town’s other vintage and resale specialists, Vintage by Misty on Fifth Avenue among them, grew in the same years for the same customer.
The result is one of the more graceful successions in downtown Scottsdale’s history. A building that spent 56 years selling the finest Native silver in the Southwest now spends its days selling the finest vintage couture in the state, both by appointment, both to people who know the difference. The White Hogan’s name is gone from the door, but the room still sells the rare thing to the person who came looking for it.