Apparel, Merchandising and Design major, Sarah Paul, started a business that offers stylish and affordable game day t-shirts and sweatshirts for Iowa State Cyclone fans.

Her Instagram account, @cyclonegameday is where her online game day apparel business is located. She started the business in the summer of 2017.

She said she got the idea when she saw distressed and bleached clothing take over her social media feed. She wanted to make a distressed and bleached Iowa State sweatshirt to wear to game day events at Iowa State. So she took to Pinterest and Youtube to find out how to make the stylish distressed and bleached shirts and found inspiration there.

After she gathered all of the information she needed in order to make the t-shirts, she got on Amazon.com and ordered an Iowa State sweatshirt off of there for $9. When the shirt arrived, she used the information she gathered on Pinterest to make the shirt.

The shirt must’ve turned out great because when she wore it, she got tons of compliments and questions from people asking her if she could make them one. She made another one for a friend from her hometown and posted a picture of the two wearing their cyclone bleached and distressed t-shirts and had many more people asking Paul to make one for them.

She then decided, after realizing how popular the shirts became, to make an Instagram account to sell more shirts to people who love and want the bleached and distressed Cyclone Gameday Apparel.

“I have been crafting clothes for a super long time since high school so I just went for it and it worked out,” Paul said.

Now she orders sweatshirts off of amazon for varied prices, but are fairly cheap. She then goes through a process of cutting them and dying them in her garage. She lets the tie-dyed ones sit overnight, but the bleach ones, she’ll wait a few minutes until she likes the turnout. Then she rinses them out in a sink separately. After that she washes them and then they are ready to go to her customers.

She says her typical audience for the shirts are fashion-loving college girls who love tailgating and want affordable game day clothing, but anyone is invited to purchase her shirts. Her shirts typically sell for around $15, depending on the original price of the t-shirt.  

Paul never expected to the shirts to have the popularity they did, but now that more people are wanting them, she will continue to make the shirts for the tailgating season but is not sure what the future holds for @cyclonegameday.

For more information or to contact Sarah, you can go to her Instagram account: @cyclonegameday