Extra assignment for extensive reading The Coolhunt havo
Celebrity obsession
Aim
To summarise an article for a partner.
Introduction
Our obsession with celebrities may be getting out of hand. Fans feel they have a right to know
everything about their favourite star, from what they wear to who they kiss. Even if you aren’t
interested, chances are you know the latest celebrity gossip whether you want to or not. The following
articles are about the celebrity worship phenomenon. See if you can summarise their most important
information to your partner.
Activities
1
Skimming the two articles in pairs. Choosing one each.
2
Reading your article and making notes.
3
Summarising the article for your partner and vice versa.
4
Answering the questions about your partner’s article using their
summary.
5
Reading the other article, checking your answers. Rating your
partner’s summary.
6
Doing a matching exercise.
7
Checking your answers in the key.
8
Discussing celebrity obsession.
5 minutes
15 minutes
15 minutes
10 minutes
15 minutes
15 minutes
5 minutes
10 minutes
Time planned
90 minutes
Instructions
1
In pairs, skim both articles quickly to judge which you would prefer to read. Each choose one
article.
2
Read the article, making some brief notes using the questions below to help you get the main
points of the article for your summary.
Fast fashion
There’s a fashion revolution underway on the High Street. From Kate Moss to Kylie, Britain’s
shoppers want to wear what the stars wear and retailers are rushing to provide it. Shops like Top
Shop, Zara and H&M are battling it out at the heart of a £27bn clothing market.
Their targets are consumers like Louise Hitch. Louise works in one of Leeds’ premier restaurants
and claims that for her, image is everything. ‘It’s really important to me to get the right look for
each season, you have to look right for your customer and give them a good first impression’, she
says. Louise shops every day, looking for styles and outfits like those her favourite fashion icons
wear.
Julian Linley, deputy editor of Heat Magazine, is not surprised by Louise’s shopping habits:
‘We’ve become more obsessed with the way that celebrities dress because it’s just become so
much more accessible. Stores are much better at cottoning onto the things that celebrities wear
and reproducing them very quickly.’
From catwalk to shop floor
Retailers are locked in a battle to try to get key catwalk trends from the drawing board to the
shelves as quickly as possible. Shoppers have become much more savvy, claims Top Shop
brand director Jane Shepherdson: ‘They want to be able to buy the things celebrities are wearing
or they want to be able to buy into the trends that they’ve seen from the catwalk as quickly as
possible.’
Top Shop’s move towards fast fashion increased sales by 20% last year. But Top Shop wasn’t
always so successful – or so quick off the mark. In the days of separate winter and summer
collections, high-street retailers often had lead times of up to 18 months on their designs.
Swedish revolution
It was Swedish firm H&M which changed all that. It appointed young designers to make high
fashion clothes as cheaply and quickly as possible. According to fashion journalist Hilary
Alexander, H&M launched ‘disposable fashion’. ‘I’m not entirely convinced that that is such a
good thing because some of the things in H&M are so cheap that literally you’d be lucky to get
two or three wears out of it and then you’d chuck it away’, Alexander says.
Spotting the threat to its business, Top Shop fought back and started to produce clothes much
more quickly. Its masterstroke was to hire young and trendy designers like Hussein Chalayan to
design clothes for the store. But there was a second threat. A former dressing gown
manufacturer, Amancio Ortega, was to transform the High Street with his formula for fast fashion
and his chain, Zara.
Spanish nights
‘We certainly knew about Zara and were extremely impressed by them. They’re very quick to get
designer-influenced products into their stores, so when we heard they were coming to the UK we
knew it would be a big challenge for us’, says Top Shop’s Shepherdson. Changing stock
frequently means customers come back to check what’s new and that means added sales. The
Zara shopper drops in 17 times a year, the High Street average is just four. ‘I think Zara is a very,
very sharp looking business’, says Philip Green.
Spinning around
With retailers copying the latest designer styles and celebrities like Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham
and Liz Hurley popping into Zara and Top Shop to pick up a bargain, the fast fashion wheel has
come full circle. ‘It’s just got faster and faster, spinning not entirely out of control but certainly
spinning at a rate that can make you dizzy’, says Hilary Alexander. ‘If you want to be in fashion,
you’ve got to stay in the race.’
Celebdaq proves addictive
You may have recently been asked by a friend, colleague or loved one whether you have become
acquainted with ‘that Celebdaq thing’. The insatiable appetite for celebrity gossip is fuelling
colossal demand for Celebdaq, which allows viewers to buy and sell shares in TV, film and music
stars. Celebdaq is a website based around selling fictional shares in celebrities as if they were
companies on the stock exchange. It has become one of the most talked about websites in
history.
On the Celebdaq game website, you can sign up to take part and players are given a fictional
£10,000 to spend on shares in celebrity stocks, which go up and down depending on the laws of
supply and demand. Such is its success that the website has already crashed and extra computer
memory has had to be brought in to cope with the demand from players – and all without a hint of
publicity. This feverishly addictive web-based ‘celebrity stock market’ was launched in mid-2002,
and the BBC has signed up just over 130,000 users to its web-based celebrity trading game less
than a week after the launch of the show.
Every week, players are paid a dividend depending on the number of column centimetres their
chosen stars receive in the newspapers or in gossip magazines. You can choose between
expensive A-list celebrities like England football coach Sven Goran Eriksson at £3.84 or a bargain
like the Queen for just £1.15.
Bearing similarities to the 1990s Fantasy Football phenomenon, Celebdaq is set to go from
strength to strength with the aid of a TV tie-in programme on the newly-launched BBC3. The
success of the website and accompanying programme on recently launched digital channel BBC3
has been hailed by the BBC as the first example of a TV programme supporting a website rather
than the other way around, and is likely to be a template for future programme launches. ‘This is
an absolute phenomenon. It has just taken off, even though we haven’t marketed it. It is also the
first TV show that has been launched by a website months before’, said one executive.
You can buy stock in any of 250 actors, musicians, sportsmen and the inexplicably famous (Big
Brother stars, for example), and dividends are paid out weekly according to the amount of
newspaper coverage each star generates. The value of shares is entirely dependent on the
punters’ or the player’s demand. So to avoid losing money and earn the chance to cash in later,
the trick is to keep an eye on upcoming tabloid tales and then buy stock in personalities before
they hit the headlines.
Celebdaq is not the first website of its kind. Popex.com has been ‘trading’ in musicians since
1998, whilst the Hollywood Stock Exchange allows investors to buy and sell stocks and bonds
both in films and the performers they feature. But what it lacks in originality, Celebdaq makes up
for in ease-of-use and an extremely well-designed interface. The website’s fake tone of financial
seriousness is so steadfast as to be almost unnerving.
The nature of the gameplay – share prices fluctuate continuously around the clock – makes it
ideal for bored office workers to dip into briefly at regular intervals. There is a small monthly cash
prize for the most successful participant, but the real satisfaction comes from doing better than
other friends who play.
Celebdaq’s popularity is another worrying indictment of society’s unhealthy obsession with the
rich and famous, but even celeb-haters may find it hard to resist investing in a portfolio of
celebrity shares.
3
4
Using the notes you made about the questions, summarise the article you read for your partner
and vice versa. Use information from 5.6 Summary step-by-step on p. 56 in your Handbook.
Now answer the questions about your partner’s article, on the basis of their summary.
A
Questions about Fast Fashion:
1
Why is the fashion in the shops changing?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2
How is fashion in the shops changing?
________________________________________________________________________
3
What is ‘fast fashion’?
________________________________________________________________________
4
Which shops are the best at ‘fast fashion’?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5
What are the differences between the ‘fast fashion’ retailers?
________________________________________________________________________
6
What is meant by ‘the fast fashion wheel has come full circle’?
________________________________________________________________________
7
Is there any other interesting information in the article?
________________________________________________________________________
B
Questions about Celebdaq:
1
What is Celebdaq?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2
How do you play Celebdaq?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3
How do the celebrity’s values change?
________________________________________________________________________
4
Why is Celebdaq so popular?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5
What makes Celebdaq different to other ‘fantasy’ leagues?
________________________________________________________________________
6
Is there any other interesting information in the article?
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5
6
Read the other article, checking your answers. Was your partner’s summary good enough to
enable you to answer the questions? Rate the summary 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent).
Match the words from the texts in the left columns with words from the texts in the right
columns.
Fast Fashion
1
rush
2
battle it out
3
premier
4
icon
5
accessible
6
savvy
7
appoint
8
chuck away
9
masterstroke
10
drop in
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
easy to get
react quickly
expert
get rid of
most prestigious
role model
intelligent action
visit
hire
compete
Celebdaq Proves Addictive
1
acquainted
a
2
colossal
b
3
fictional
c
4
cope
d
5
feverishly
e
6
launch
f
7
phenomenon
g
8
inexplicably
h
9
fluctuate
i
10
indictment
j
7
8
huge
begin
mysteriously
get to know
not real
frenzied
condemnation
change irregularly
unexplained success
manage
Check your answers in the key.
In pairs discuss how interested in celebrities you are and if you think that the attention the
media pay to what celebrities wear or their private lives is obsessive.