On Tuesday night, The White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza was spotted courtside at the Barclay Center watching WNBA’s New York Liberty beat the Minnesota Lynx.
The T-shirt she wore, in support of neither team, would go on to almost sell out in the next few hours. What was she wearing?
Watch Party PHL’s T-shirt that reads “Philly is a Women’s Sports Town. Est. 2030.”,
“It was the coolest thing ever,” said Watch Party PHL founder, Jen Leary, the Philly firefighter who founded Watch Party PHL for women’s sports fans to watch their favorite women (and men’s) teams play ball. The organization launched the T-shirt last month once news about Philadelphia getting its own WNBA team in 2030 broke. (Hence the “established in 2030″ tagline.)
“I hoped it would blow up,” Leary said Wednesday morning. “But I’m pleasantly surprised that it blew up like this.”
Plaza’s donning the scoop necked graphite gray T-shirt with orange lettering — with a basketball as a stand-in for the letter O in women’s — during Tuesday night’s game was as serendipitous as it was lucky.
Leary, who is raising funds for a Watch Party PHL gathering space that will be a cafe during the day and bar at night that she hopes to open early next year, was wearing the T-shirt at a meeting with Aubrey Plaza’s sister, Natalie Plaza, at Rival Bros Coffee Roasters Friday morning. The two met to explore investment opportunities for the future space.
The Plaza sisters are Wilmington natives and avid women’s sports fans.
“Natalie saw me in the shirt and she said, ‘Hey, Aubrey is going to the Liberty game on the 19th and it would be cool if she wears that shirt’,” Leary said.
“I thought ‘Oh my God that’s amazing’.”
But there was a problem.
The shirts, printed by Philadelphia-based women’s T-shirt printing company, Go Hamm, were sold out.
“So I took off [my] shirt in the middle of 24th and Lombard right outside of Rival Bros. It was one of those 100 degree days out and I had a tank top on underneath.”
Leary said she had put it on at 9 a.m. But still,” Leary said laughing, “I told her she better wash it.”
The Parks and Rec star did that and, on Tuesday night, she was photographed in it.
Leary let the folks at Go Hamm know Aubrey Plaza would be wearing the shirt, so they could print more shirts, seizing on the opportunity.
A percentage of the shirts’ sales will fund the Watch Party PHL meeting space.
Shortly after the Liberty-Lynx game started, one of Leary’s co-workers, who was at the game, texted her a photo of Plaza cheering in the shirt.
Minutes later, the actress was featured on the jumbotron. Then the New York Liberty team featured her wearing the shirt on its Instagram stories.
“And it went crazy from there,” Leary said.
“Philly is a Women’s Sports Town” T-shirts are available online at Go Hamm
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