Q 2. A newspaper is running a competition inviting teenagers to submit articles on the following subjects:

· Clothes, accessories and general fashion

· TV and/or cinema

· Popular music

· Sport

· Computer games and entertainment

Choose ONE of these subjects and write your newspaper article, which should be aimed at a teenage audience.

Fashion. There’s a lot I could say about it. My friends say I’m obsessed with buying shoes, with tops, with jewellery, with skirts, etc. I suppose they’re right, in a way. I spend my Saturdays traipsing happily around the shops, either locally or at one of the shopping centres nearby. It’s a fate that have succumbed a million teenage girls. Through my observation of fashion, I’ve become a bit of an expert. There are rules to fashion, of course. They’re rules every girl, who wants to look good and feel great, should live by.

1) DO NOT wear socks with sandals, wedges, or any kind of open toed shoe. It’s the first rule. You shouldn’t even need to be told. Less should you be asking, why? You should just know. Don’t do it.

2) DO NOT wear matching jewellery from the same box. Unless it doesn’t look obvious. It is beyond lame. It is what is commonly known as over co-ordinating. Wear them separately, please.

3) SHOW OFF your good points. If you’ve got legs like ropey tree trunks, don’t wear miniskirts. Or, if you’re the kind of person who follows fashion religiously, don’t wear the miniskirt at all. It’s last season. (I personally wear whatever I like, whether it was popular last year or not, but I know girls who follow the trends as if their lives depend on it.)

(These are just the basics, the obvious ones. There a plenty more, believe me.) Which brings me on to my next point. The fashion magazines. There are an abundance of them in the shops; just look and you’ll see shelves piled high withy glossy editions of the latest Vogue, Elle, or Grazia. The teen magazines have cashed in too; look closer and you’ll see the plastic, pouting models on the front of Teen Vogue, Elle Girl and Teen Now. It’s like a disease. In a good way, or a bad, depending on how you see things.

Girls flick open their copies of Cosmo Girl, or, if they’re older, the slightly more sophisticated Cosmopolitan. They see a celebrity, a model or a soap star, wearing the latest must have, gold embossed, £150 belt from an exclusive London boutique. They fall in love with it, because it looks so good on Kate Moss/ Sienna Miller/ whoever is this weeks pin up. (By the time you read this there will be a different one.) They know that this is a mad craze. They don’t care. They rush out and spend money on it, just to wear it solid for one week, and then throw it away because ‘this week’s colour is hot pink.’ Such is this fashion obsessed, celeb mad world.

But what are clothes, really? The dictionary definition is ‘a garment, made of material, worn by people to protect from the weather; for modesty and fashion.’ But clothes are so much more than that.

Imagine two situations: In the first, you are walking down the street, wearing an outfit. You don’t like the outfit, it isn’t what you would normally wear, and you feel uncomfortable in it. People are staring at you because they don’t like the outfit either. It is mismatched, it doesn’t fit correctly, it is wrong for you in every possible way. Now imagine a second situation: you are waking down the same street, with the same people, at the exact same time of day. You have picked your outfit, and you know it looks amazing. You like the colour, texture and style of what you are wearing. You look amazing; you feel amazing. Experience both these feelings, and you will never again say that clothes are unimportant.

Kate Moss is a fashion model. Everyone knows this; she was Chanel, Rimmel, and Matthew Williamsons’ muse for what seemed like forever. She was on the front cover of Vogue several times in 2004. She was an idol to women and girls everywhere. I never liked her, for various reasons, but that is not relevant. The point is, her fame, and sense of style, were envied by millions.

Until her, very public, recent downfall. First she was dropped by Matthew Williamson, designer of premier dresses of the rich and famous, for the younger, prettier, fresher, Sienna Miller. Ms Moss was then snapped snorting cocaine at a party, the effect, some said, of her relationship with drug addicted singer Pete Doherty. Subsequently, she was relieved of her lucrative contracts with Rimmel and chain store H&M. Now, Kate Moss is basically nothing. It took her thirteen years to become the untouchable, glamorous supermodel that she was, and one night to destroy it all. Because the industry is fickle beyond belief.

Last year, I, along with a friend, attended the Clothes Show Live event at the Birmingham NEC. We had a lot of fun, mostly laughing our heads off at the ludicrous dresses on show at the main catwalk event. One model appeared with a birdcage on her head. Behind her, without a trace of humour or embarrassment, was a man. He was wearing a giant bird’s beak. He walked up to the woman, and began to peck furiously at the cage on her head. Why? We will never know. This is the lunacy of the business.

This year, I am going back to Clothes Show, for the second time. In the half term holidays, a group of my friends and I are planning to go to the Sugar/ Rimmel London model competition. We will be entering. We don’t think we’ll get through, but we want to go and have fun trying.

You might ask, after reading this, why are some teenage girls still so obsessed with clothes and fashion?

Because, ahead of everything else, clothes make the person. You can feel beautiful in them, or they can make you feel like the biggest loser ever. People judge each other on their clothes; maybe they shouldn’t, it is not up to me to decide, but they do. They can add to your self-esteem, they can be your vice when you are feeling low; finding the perfect outfit for an occasion can be strenuous, or stressful, or brilliant fun. You can wear clothes however you want. You can go wild; you can rip up your favourite jeans and tie the holes together with string, if that’s what you feel like that day. You can start a revolutionary new trend just by stepping out of your front door, if you have enough confidence. Fashion can be whatever you want it to be; much like life.