Mother, it's all right for you to talk of another generation when women were chattels, and they did as men told them to. But this is today. Stephen and I are equals. We took each other of our own free will, for life, because we loved each other. We've always given each other our best. I won't qualify that relationship now. It's wrong. Shockingly wrong. And women that stand for such things are beneath contempt. I'll never be one of them. Never.

NORMA SHEARER as Mary Haines in THE WOMEN (1939) dir. George Cukor

Katharine Hepburn

Balenciaga evening dress, fall/winter 1951

From Kerry Taylor Auctions

'one is All, and by it All, and for it All

— and if it does not contain All, then All is nothing'

insp. x