Ad Creative Student, Natalie Addicott, Turns Class Project into a Sustainable Fashion Statement
By: Kayla Riley
For senior Natalie Addicott, creativity doesn’t stop when she leaves the classroom. As an advertising creative major with a minor in business, she consistently finds ways to connect her coursework with her passions for sewing and sustainability.
“I have been sewing since I was about 12, when my grandma taught me,” Addicott said. “As I got older, I started thrifting and repurposing things, like finding an old pattern or fabric and giving it new life.”
That interest in sewing and upcycling inspired one of her favorite class projects in ADV 245 – Multimedia Commercial Production.
“The assignment was to take a brand that was popular between the 1960s and 1990s and reimagine it for today’s audience,” she said. “Simplicity Patterns used to sell paper patterns that people could trace and sew from. It felt like the perfect fit for what I enjoy, including promoting sustainability and slowing down the use of fast fashion.”
Addicott also drew inspiration from her small business, Thread Cycle, a sustainable fashion brand that transforms thrifted clothing and fabric into one-of-a-kind, handmade pieces. It combines creativity, sewing and upcycling to give new life to materials that would otherwise go to waste, turning them into new wearable pieces. Thread Cycle also serves as a platform to explore creative advertising and campaigns, using storytelling and design to engage audiences while promoting sustainability and conscious fashion choices.
She reimagined Simplicity Patterns as a modern brand that encourages hands-on fashion creation, blending her personal passions with her academic work.
“I created a series of social media posts and short-form videos that showed people sewing through different generations,” Addicott said. “I wanted to show that sewing is not outdated. It is creative, sustainable and still relevant today.”
One of her favorite parts of the campaign was a video montage of vintage Simplicity pattern covers, which showcased how fashion had changed over the decades.
“You could see how styles evolved but also how many of them are coming back,” she said.
By combining her classwork with her business, Addicott created a project that felt meaningful and authentic, allowing her to continue exploring the connection between design, sustainability and storytelling one stitch at a time.