Warm Shape is bringing local arts and goods to Tucson Mall.
Tucson artist Linus Schief opened Warm Shape at the MSA Annex, 267 South Avenida del Convento, in 2022, offering locally designed T-shirts, hats, mugs, bookmarks, keychains, stickers, clothing, skincare, herbal remedies, ceramics and much more from dozens of Tucson makers.
Lady, the shop dog, keeps an eye from the door at Warm Shape in the Tucson Mall.
Now, she has expanded Warm Shape to a second location.
The expansion has been in the works for some time; Schief said she was inspired to look for a space in the mall after watching the documentary “Secret Mall Apartment.”
“It's all about these students at Rhode Island School of Design in the 1990s, who figured out a way to receive mail at the mall and even live in the mall. They found a secret third space that they built out into this apartment,” Schief said. “So that kind of put the mall on my radar in a certain way.”
People are also reading…
Owner Linus Schief chats with a customer at Warm Shape in the Tucson Mall.
After that, Schief said she started going to Tucson Mall, 4500 N. Oracle Road, over the summer to walk her dog.
“I went just to walk around, chill out, plug my phone in and do some work in the hallway. And it was nice,” she said. “Fast forward to June, I'm standing in the parking lot of the Tucson Mall at the Tesoro restaurant because my friend has a trivia night there, and we were all on the patio, and my friend was like, ‘have you ever thought about opening a store at the mall?’ And I just became all lit up.”
Not long after, the perfect space opened up on the upper level of the mall, right next to Caffeine Cauldron.
Erica Clum looks over the custom T-shirts on display at Warm Shape during the shop’s soft opening in the Tucson Mall on Sept. 29.
“It was covered in these decals, vinyl shapes on the front glass, and they were in these warm colors, warm tones, and I was like, ‘that's weird. This place is already covered in warm shapes,’” she said.
The new space will stay true to the local products that customers know and love, while offering something new and different, Schief said.
“The vibe is a little different from the annex because the annex has a broader range of products,” she said. “For the mall, I was really envisioning the mall I went to when I was a teenager with '90s' posters and T-shirts.”
Her focus is on print artists and new T-shirt styles, Schief said.
“And it's not just about ‘what are we going to sell there?’ It's ‘what are we gonna do here?,’” she said.
For Schief, that means leaning into the mall culture of the ‘90s. She's thinking about regular ' 90s-style aerobics classes, CDs and cassette tapes played from a boombox, and karaoke.
Lano Dash and her son Julian grab dinner while other patrons peruse the prints during the soft opening for Warm Shape in the Tucson Mall in late September.
“We're always gonna have our karaoke machine ready to go so if you ever want to come by and sing a song, sing a duet with me,” Schief said. “We have some ideas about getting 10% off your purchase if you do a song.”
She also wants to host community arts events like album releases for local musicians.
“Dimitri Manos from Golden Boots, he's a local musician, he's gonna sell Bug Club albums and they're gonna have their album release show in the space,” Schief said.
What she is most excited about and loves most about the mall is that it is a place for everybody.
“I hope that people will come and hang out with us, and not just have it be a place to go shopping, but a place to come and have fun, or present an idea, or talk about the world or just connect through art,” Schief said. “I kind of just want to see what happens from there. I don't really know what could happen, but I feel like anything could happen.”
The Tucson Mall location is open Mondays to Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.;11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and Sundays from noon to 6 p.m.
