Should Kate Winslet be flirty? Sean Penn be green? Mickey Rourke be organic?
The time to find out is Sunday night, when movie stars troll the Oscar gift suite at the Academy Awards. There, stars will have a chance to pick up a free Just Be T-shirt from Methuen native Michelle Pratt-Lienhart.
The shirts are among the goods celebrities can select for their Oscar goody bags. That means the next time "the paps" snap Katie Holmes coming out of Starbucks, she could be wearing one of Pratt-Lienhart's Just Be T's.
"If you talk to anybody in this business, you know if you can get the right celebrity to wear your product, that is all that you need," said Pratt-Lienhart, who now lives in Webster, N.H. "This was a great way to get some press and publicity about my small company."
The Just Be line began to take shape in June 2008, when Pratt-Lienhart, 39, was teaching at an art college. For her course, students created T-shirts and had them silk-screened by a New Hampshire company.
During the project, the owner of the silk-screening company asked if Pratt-Lienhart ever had any design ideas for T-shirts. It was her inspiration to come up with the Just Be concept.
"That was the push I needed," said the graduate of Presentation of Mary Academy in Methuen.
Pratt-Lienhart's T-shirts are designed to allow people to "just be" who they are. She calls the line "a state of mind, way of life, and a philosophy."
"I am still designing T-shirts," said Pratt-Lienhart, who has a backlog of about 200 concepts. "The possibilities are almost endless."
The shirts have sayings like "be pink," "be sweet," "be a sk8r," and "be punk." The sayings are paired with large illustrations inspired by vintage poster designs or styles from the 1920s to the 1980s.
"They are not meant to inspire — just be," Pratt-Lienhart said. "People love to express who they are by what they wear."
In addition to the shirts, Pratt-Lienhart is trying to create an online community. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are among the sites she uses to reach people of all ages.
Pratt-Lienhart would like to get everyone who owns one of her shirts to share and show how they "just be" by uploading photos and videos of themselves, well, just being.
While sales of her shirts so far have been a little slow, Pratt-Lienhart hopes the "Oscar bump" will increase them.
"It's going slow but it's so moving in a upward direction, which is the way you want to do it," she said.
The former Eagle-Tribune newspaper carrier hopes to serve as inspiration for other fledgling businesses.
"People are so tired of hearing about this bank or that bank going under. They are tired of hearing about the bad," Pratt-Lienhart said. "Seeing a success, especially a startup in these economic times — it will boost people's hopefulness that we can turn this all around."
For more information visit www.jb-justbe.com or call 603-369-3699.
