Fashion is the prevailing custom in dress, manners, speech of a particular place or time, especially as established by the dominant section of society or the leaders in the fields of art, literature and others. Style is often a close synonym for fashion, in discriminating use suggests a distinctive fashion, especially the way of dressing, or living that distinguishes persons with money and taste. Mode, the French word expressing this idea, suggests the height of fashion in dress or behavior at any particular time.

Clothes do not make the man? The idea of this topic came from watching my students draw clothes they wished to wear. I thought that it was a way to imagine how they could be in fashion when most of them didn't have enough money to buy the clothes; imaginary clothes have not yet been designed!

Several students expressed their opinions freely while others spent several hours trying to find adequate words to express their feelings. At the beginning, they were a little confused due to a famous Romanian proverb: Clothes do not make the man. "Should I prefer fashion or not?" or "It is a real art to be in fashion?" were the most frequent questions.

Reading their little essays, I learnt that most of the children are not exactly satisfied with their clothes while others don't care about fashion. The little ones prefer fancy clothes, and the others prefer what is comfortable. Some girls imagine their clothes to be fashionable, jazzy and colorful while others appreciate that the most important accessories in any closet are shoes!

Judging from these writings in which the students added "through words" their personalities and reflected through their imagination their favorite colors or clothing preferences, it was a good exercise for increasing motivation and encouraging an openness to new ideas.