Bible Society is inviting teenagers to design a costume they feel captures who they are.

The outfit will go with five others already created by students at the London College of Fashion depicting the personalities of Eve, Jacob, Rahab, Joseph and Jesus.

The Bible Society and the college are challenging youngsters in schools across the country to design a costume to put on the 'Empty Hanger'.

The Rev Joanna Jepson, who is chaplain at the London College of Fashion, helped students at the college design the five outfits.

Joanna says, "The five characters are part of stories that convey profound struggles of heroes and anti-heroes which will connect with the children.

"I hope that as Empty Hanger goes around the country, children will enjoy it and that it fires their imaginations and fires their creativity."

Luke Walton, Bible Society’s Culture Programme Manager says, "Empty Hanger will help young people to consider issues of environmental sustainability, deceit, self-deception, fame, ambition and being an outsider."

The project was inspired by Chris Blockley, the chaplain at Bishops’ College School in Gloucester, who enlisted the help of the London College of Fashion to help him tell stories from the Gospels through different media in lessons at the school.

The Empty Hanger idea has been tried out at the Gloucester school ahead of its nationwide launch at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Telford on 21 October.

Schools are being encouraged to use the outfits in school lessons on a range of subjects, from art and design, PSHE, design technology and RE.

Bible Society has produced a video with lesson plans and details of the fashion designs.

They can choose to ask students to design their own outfits to fill an empty hanger or ask design technology classes to create a clothes rack that symbolises the whole community or school.

Schools can also invite Joanna Jepson or a local representative to visit them with the costumes for an interactive event.

Bible Society suggested local churches sponsor the scheme for their nearest secondary school.

Walton said, "Empty Hanger will help bring the Bible alive for a generation that largely don’t read it. The stories in the Bible are like a soap opera for all eternity. They tell us about ourselves and we can learn about how to live life today through them."