5 Words to Try On for Women's History MonthLittle Words Project makes jewelry that helps women express themselves and encourage each other. Founder Adriana Carrig recommends five words to wear now.
If you ever made a BFF bracelet at summer camp, you know the particular power of looking down at your wrist and remembering that you're someone else's other half. Of course, once we're grown up, often the person we need to make friends with most turns out to be ourselves. So in 2013, when Adriana Carrig founded the Little Words Project, she wanted to give women that BFF bracelet boost — using whatever language helps them love themselves or feel a larger sense of belonging. Last year Little Words sold more than 155,000 custom, handmade word bracelets, and counts celebrities like Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, Olivia Culpo and Joey King as fans. "Strength has always been our number one best selling word," Carrig says. "That tells me that whatever you're going through — whether it's the loss of a loved one, a #MeToo experience or, you know, your candidate losing to someone that you could never have possibly imagined — it matters to look down and see a reminder to keep going."
Little Words is built around a simple conceit: Be kind to yourself, and then be kind to someone else. Each of the classic block-letter bead bracelets are tagged with a registration code, and when a bracelet owner feels she no longer needs the encouragement, she can pass the bracelet along to someone who does. Its new keeper can register the bracelet on Little Words' site and trace its journey through all the women who took solace in it before she did. Carrig says she's seen a bracelet passed between as many as 25 women.
Little Words' bracelets are made-to-order, but the company also offers a core collection of their most popular words, which changes based on demand, as well as limited-time capsule collections. So Carrig has something of a pulse on the language that (mostly young) women are feeling empowered by. Over the last year they received so many orders for "warrior" that they added it to the core collection.
Another new permanent addition is "self-love," which Carrig herself has been wearing a lot recently. "I'm 29 and on my own journey of fertility and trying to conceive," she shares. "So I've been learning the importance of taking care of myself. You know, as an entrepreneur, you think you have to be burning the midnight oil, working your butt off. But come time to have a child or, you know, take time for yourself, you don't know how to do it because your body is so run down. So my biggest thing over the past year and a half is remembering the importance of self-love."
Little Words is celebrating Women's History Month by releasing a capsule collection called "I Am Woman." Here are five words worth wearing.
