Alice Catherine

Welcome back to the second instalment of my ‘Girls support girls’ series, it’s been a little longer than anticipated due to a crazy workload, but I’m happy to be finally sat at my laptop writing about one of my favourite topics – inspirational women. I recently received a message from a lady who attended the women’s march back in January, along with millions of other women – all standing together to advocate women’s rights…

The message went on to explain how she worked in TV and film, and that she had had this idea to create suffragette costumes for her and her friends to wear during the march. The costumes looked incredible and definitely added a new dimension to their message – sporting their armour for the day, Amy Trend and her fellow protestors headed out for the march…

“We marched dressed as suffragettes (we were our hero, Sylvia Pankhurst) brandishing a placard saying  “same shit, different century”, hoping it would be an incredibly, powerful symbol. We wanted to honour and remind people of the amazing, brave women before us, who fought tirelessly for the rights we have today, whilst showing that we still have a long way to go in finishing the job that they started.” – Amy Trend

The image of Amy and her friends caught the attention of both The Guardian and Stylist Magazine who labelled it, ‘The girl band reunion we’ve all been waiting for’. As much as the online world can be a negative place, it can also prove to be a very powerful one, encouraging important issues and concerns to become everyones…

“We had no idea that we would make such an impact and cannot believe how far our picture has spread worldwide. The fact that we struck a chord with so many, just goes to show that people are genuinely worried about our human rights and the current trend for backwards politics and archaic ideals. On the day and since, we have been humbled by how many young people were either already inspired by the suffrage movement, or were galvanised by the proliferation of our image, to find out what it stood for.” – Amy Trend 

Since then, Amy and her friends decided to utilise this new found exposure and their charity clothing line ‘Suffragette City’ was born. They set up the company to draw further attention to the cause they believe so passionately in, whilst creating a fun slogan T-shirt that everyone can enjoy and wear with pride. I think it’s often easy to fall into the trap of thinking ‘just because we have more than we used to, lets seek comfort in that’ – when in reality, lots of women experience inequality and mistreatment on a daily basis. Sometimes we don’t even realise it or acknowledge it because it’s second nature or has become normalised by society. Events like the women’s march are so essential in not only bookmarking how far we have come, but how far we have left to go. I’m forever thankful to be surrounded by strong and independent women – we deserve the best chances in life

“The Women’s March was so fantastic in January, and I’m so thrilled that it seemed to start this fantastic year of protest! If anything, now I realise that I used to be slightly scared/intimidated by women and it’s brilliant that we are starting to realise that we should be supporting each other, not just seeing other women as our competition!” – Amy Trend

Amy Trend, Hannah Monkley & Amy Towle – women’s march, London 2017 

I hope you enjoyed reading about Amy’s story as much as I did – It’s refreshing to be able to discuss other women on here, rather than just fashion and beauty! If you have a spare moment then it would be amazing if you could check out Amy’s clothing line – so far there’s the T-shirt I’m wearing above and a little tote bag too! All profits will be donated to the Abortion Rights charity who carry out incredible work, campaigning for pro choice and defending our rights as women to safe and legal abortion. I know this is a charity close to a lot of women’s hearts, most of us have experienced it in some form – whether it’s a family member, friend, or ourselves. It’s so important that as women, we have control over our bodies, especially in times of emotional stress or trauma. Every woman in the world should have the right to safe abortion, to fair treatment, to equal rights and equal opportunities…

Alice x

Images of me taken by Adriana 

Shop T-shirts here | Suffragette City Instagram here | Read more about Abortion Rights here