Hello you wonderful lot and happy International Women’s Day! In the spirit of the occasion, I thought I’d put together a little post in dedication to some female icons that I admire, and do something a little different. I thought it might be cool to share some of my favourite ladies with you, along with some quotes that have always stuck with me. Each of the women below are dear to me in one way or another, either because of their personal style, strong voice, or beautiful words that they left behind…

WOMEN I ADMIRE | QUOTATIONS THAT STUCK

“When I married John [Barry], it was under false pretenses. He thought he was marrying a girl with huge eyes and thick lashes, but underneath all that dolly-bird make-up I looked totally different. We were all so unsure of ourselves in the Sixties. Fashion was so important that it overtook our identities. We all wanted to look like Jean Shrimpton, but in reality we were poor copies.

I slept next to John with eyeliner under my pillow. I would wait until the lights went out and then I would put on my teeth brace–it was a metal contraption that went over my head and made me look like a racehorse. One day, I opened a drawer and saw a picture of one of John’s ex-wives with blonde hair, and I went straight to the hairdressers to get my hair tinted and straightened. I thought I was nothing without my make-up, and I wasn’t able to show the real me until much later. It’s pathetic when I think of the camouflage; I am glad that my daughters Charlotte and Lou have braved their faces.”

– Jane Birkin

“I feel happy and secure when I’m on my bed with a good book… I forget everything which is terrible in our world.”

“I never get bored. There isn’t enough time in the day for me.”

-Françoise  Hardy

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment.”

– Joan Didion 

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”

“I’m going to promote myself exactly as I am, with all my weak points and my strong ones. My weak points are that I’m self-conscious and often insecure, and my strong point is that I don’t feel any shame about it.”

– Patti Smith

“I think too much. I think ahead. I think behind. I think sideways. I think it all. If it exists, I’ve fucking thought of it.”

– Winona Ryder 

“I can get through anything and do anything regardless of whether I’m a woman or whether I’m mentally ill or whether I’m a Libra or anything else. I can do it and so can you.”

 “I think I do overshare. It’s my way of trying to understand myself. … It creates community when you talk about private things.”

– Carrie Fisher 

“I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

– Sylvia Plath

“I want to reach people and express myself. You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate. You have to put up with people projecting their own ideas, attitudes, misunderstanding you. But it’s worth being a public fool if that’s all you can be in order to communicate yourself.”

“I’m in love with everyone I’ve ever met in one way or another. I’m just a crazy, unhinged disaster of a human being.”

– Edie Sedgwick

“When you grow up as a girl, the world tells you the things that you are supposed to be: emotional, loving, beautiful, wanted. And when you are those things, the world tells you they are inferior: illogical, weak, vain, empty.”

 “I said, ‘Instead of going in the direction that a lot of the women singers are going in [revealing], I’ll be very, very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet…I will have mystique.”

— Stevie Nicks

“I have a lot of regrets, but I’m not going to think of them as regrets.” 

“How can one be a woman and not be a Feminist? That’s my question.”

– Blondie

“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.”

– Lauren Bacall

“You don’t learn from successes; you don’t learn from awards; you don’t learn from celebrity; you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that’s the truth.”

– Jane Fonda 

 “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”

— Coco Chanel

“I don’t need an overpowering, powerful, rich man to feel secure. I’d much rather have a man who is there for me, who really loves me, who is growing, who is real.”

“I don’t want to wear what every other women wears. I won’t be dictated to.”

– Bianca Jagger

“Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow, it’s all the same day.”

–Janis Joplin

“I will not be “famous,” “great.” I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”

– Virgina Woolf

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”

― Frida Kahlo

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”

– Jane Austen

“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”

—Maya Angelou

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”

– Mary Wollstonecraft 

Happy International Women’s Day! 

P.S, If this post has you feeling all girl power, I suggest you head over to the StyleLikeU YouTube account – it’s my absolute favourite for inspiration & I promise you won’t regret it! The Man Reppeller chat room series is also all kinds of wonderful – I often binge watch them repeatedly on a Sunday and brainstorm new ideas. I hope you all have an amazing day and I’ll be back with some new content very soon! Let me know if you liked this style of post in the comments below, I had so much fun putting it together…

Alice x

Photography by Adriana / All other imagery sourced from Tumblr & Pinterest

I’m wearing – Top c/o – PSC | Jeans – Vintage (similar here) | Bag – Vintage via Etsy