Senior Capstone Project, Northeastern University
Textile, Research, and Reflection-Based Work

Tender Armor: Textured Collar Series is my senior capstone project, created at Northeastern University as a culmination of research, reflection, and hands-on making. Through this body of work, I explore the deep connections between the aging female body and textures found in nature—wrinkled petals, leathery bell peppers, layered rock formations—organic forms that shift and change over time, and somehow become more beautiful in the process.

At the heart of the project is a series of hand-crafted collars—each one a kind of tender armor. Collars frame the neck, a place many aging women feel especially vulnerable about, and they rest above the heart, holding both protection and softness. These pieces are meant to feel familiar, symbolic, and intimate. I used a mix of sewing, collaging, dyeing, and smocking to create tactile surfaces that echo the complexity of skin, time, and memory.

The work is supported by a written reflection and visual process book, where I draw from feminist theory, art history, and my own lived experience to consider how we’re taught to fear aging—and especially how that fear is placed on women’s bodies. I reference voices like Susan Sontag, Griselda Pollock, and Suzy Lake, who have all made space to think critically about the representation of older women in media and art.

Tender Armor is about finding new language for aging. It’s about texture as a form of storytelling. It’s about embracing the physical evidence of time—not as something to fix or conceal, but as something to honor and celebrate.