Heroine chic

‘I should put on my red dress and it would be thin as a veil ... It would make a flower shape as I sank down, in the middle of the room, on a gilt chair’

The Waves, Virginia Woolf Photograph: John Paul Pietrus/Guardian

‘Her dress was richly trimmed with Venetian lace. In her black hair, all her own, she wore a little garland of pansies’

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy Photograph: John Paul Pietrus/Guardian

‘A woman can never be too fine while she is all in white. No, I see no finery about you; nothing but what is perfectly proper’

Mansfield Park, Jane Austen Photograph: John Paul Pietrus/Guardian

‘She wore a slim, cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker ... Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glasses blotted out her eyes’

Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Truman Capote Photograph: John Paul Pietrus/Guardian

‘They hadn’t tampered with her natural beauty, yet somehow they had succeeded in heightening it ... She wore eye make-up and her hair was fuller, like a lion’s mane. She still looked every inch the lady, but she was exciting now ’

Valley Of The Dolls, Jacqueline Susann Photograph: John Paul Pietrus/Guardian