What it’s actually like
Hotel bedrooms are the standard most people measure their own against, and Valerianne exists to close the gap. The shop occupies a small, charming adobe building on First Avenue, just west of Marshall Way and next door to Arcadia Farms, and it is stocked like the linen closet of a very good hotel: fine sheets and duvet covers, pillows, towels and bath accessories, tabletop linens and dinnerware, and gifts for the home. It is quiet, a little hidden, and not built for passing traffic, which is why a designer at Wiseman & Gale calls it the best-kept secret in Scottsdale.
The owner is Greg Harper, who has been in the luxury home business for more than thirty years. He does the buying, traveling for unusual lines and working with artisans who make one-of-a-kind pieces, and his clientele keeps coming back for the finds. The house philosophy is in the details: the cloth napkin at a dinner table, the mint on the pillow, the weight of a towel. Prices reflect the lines, and the shop does not pretend otherwise.
The other half of the business is design. Harper has been designing bedrooms for years, for private clients and alongside the Valley’s interior designers, and works with local workrooms to make custom bedding for clients who want something nobody else has. That is why Valerianne is listed among the interior-design firms of the Scottsdale Arts District as well as being a shop.
What to buy
Sheets and a duvet that change the bed. The core of the stock. Ask what Harper sleeps on; the answer is the shortcut to the right line.
Custom bedding. The service that sets the shop apart, made by local workrooms to your bed and your room.
Towels and bath accessories. The fastest way to make a guest bath feel like a hotel, and an easy gift.
Tabletop. Napkins, table linens and serving pieces for the dinner party, and the most packable thing in the store.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
Valerianne is at 7033 East First Avenue, on the short stretch of First between Goldwater Boulevard and Marshall Way, a block north of the Main Street Arts District galleries. Street spaces on First Avenue are few and coveted by the Arcadia Farms lunch crowd; the public garage near Main Street and First Street is the closest reliable parking, and the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is a longer flat walk east. The Old Town on foot note covers the grid.
A design consultation works best by appointment, so call ahead if you are bringing a project rather than browsing. Weekday mornings are calm. The cool months bring the winter residents setting up second homes and the design trade at full speed; summer is slower and a good time for the long conversation a custom bed requires. For larger furniture to go with the linens, Wiseman & Gale is on Marshall Way around the corner, and the painter Amery Bohling keeps her gallery a few doors east on First Avenue.
Eat while you’re there
Arcadia Farms Café is literally next door, the daytime café Carolyn Ellis opened in a vintage house in 1990, and lunch there is the natural pairing. Café Monarch farther west on First Avenue is the reservation-only prix-fixe dinner. Fourtillfour on First Avenue is the coffee, and Malee’s Thai Bistro on Main Street is the easy dinner a block south.
How it got here
First Avenue west of Scottsdale Road is the arts district’s quieter cousin. Main Street a block south became the gallery street in the 1960s and 1970s, and the arts colony that began on Main and Fifth Avenue spilled onto the side streets around them. The block of First Avenue between Goldwater and Marshall Way kept a small scale: Arcadia Farms took a vintage house here in 1990, and Valerianne’s neighbors are small buildings rather than storefront rows.
Valerianne fits that pattern. It is not a gallery and not quite a furniture showroom, but a specialist that serves the same houses the district’s galleries and design firms furnish. Greg Harper’s thirty-plus years in the luxury-linen business show in the edit and in the relationships: interior designers send clients to him, and at least one at Wiseman & Gale, the Marshall Way design house that has been dressing Scottsdale homes since 1965, says so on the record.
The shop’s appeal is the one that has always drawn people to downtown’s side streets: a single owner with a strong eye, working in a small old building, selling things that are hard to find elsewhere. For more of that on the same few blocks, Fashion by Robert Black keeps vintage couture in the White Hogan building farther east on First Avenue, and the Main Street Arts District guide covers the galleries around the corner.