Project¶

Presentation¶

Concept | She Who Holds the Ground¶

Before armour was metal, it was memory. Before protection was hardness, it was holding.

She Who Holds the Ground is a matriarchal armour formed from the same systems that keep land intact: roots, fibres, moisture, mineral skins, and slow electrical rhythms. It does not defend against attack. It defends against disconnection.

This garment is inspired by the Irish landscape, not as an image or motif, but as a living system. It behaves like the land it references: growing, holding, responding, and remembering.

Roots grow, interlace, and grip. Fibres weave and remember labour. Electrical signals pass quietly through living matter, translating land presence into a pulse felt against the body.

The armour listens before it responds.

What is it?¶

A wearable back-and-side armour composed of:
Living and dried root systems (unsure yet of which is best), grown through hexagonal structures referencing Irish geology
Bio-based composite skins made from alginate, plant oils, and natural fibres (innerlining or back)
Woven straw and flax structures acting as both reinforcement and lineage (back/accessories)
An embedded bio-electrical sensing system that reads subtle voltage changes in roots which will triggger
A vibration motor that translates those signals into a slow, grounding pulse felt by the wearer
An inner affirmation layer, stitched directly into the garment, readable only by the body wearing it (maybe engraving a divine illustration)

It is worn on the front & back of the body where weight is carried, where history accumulates.

Key word definitions¶

Why It Exists?¶

In Irish tradition, land has long been understood not as passive ground or property, but as something that holds memory through use: labour, seasonal practice, famine, resilience, and continuity. Meaning emerges not through ownership, but through an ongoing relationship.

Contemporary relationships to land, however, are largely mediated through systems of extraction, enclosure, and speed. Land is treated as background, something to be managed, optimised, or consumed, rather than as an active force that shapes bodies, cultures, and ways of knowing.

This shift is not accidental. Processes of colonisation, enclosure, and patriarchal governance systematically dismantled communal and cyclical systems of care. Knowledge held through bodily labour, seasonal rhythms, and women’s leadership in land stewardship was displaced by abstract control and linear productivity.

The consequences of this disconnection are now visible: ecological degradation, the erosion of local material knowledge, diminished bodily awareness of place, and cultural amnesia around women’s roles in sustaining land-based systems.

Modern forms of armour, technological, social, and emotional, often respond to these conditions by hardening the body. They protect through separation, insulation, and distance.

This work proposes another model: armour as rootedness, as reconnection.

By working with living materials that require care, time, and restraint, the project rejects extractive design processes and instead adopts reciprocal making. The plan is not dominate the material but to tend it. Growth, decay, and unpredictability are not controlled but accommodated.

The embedded electronic system does not amplify or dramatise the land. It listens, measures, and responds quietly, translating subtle bio-electrical variation into a slow, grounding pulse felt against the body.

Control is deliberately withheld.

The body does not command the system. The land sets the rhythm.

Core idea¶

Protection does not come from hardness alone. It comes from connection, anchoring, and the ability to feel what is beneath you.

She Who Holds the Ground reframes armour as a living system, one that remembers where it comes from and asks the wearer to do the same.

Project question¶

What happens to power, identity, and the body when we remember that the land shapes us, and that women once held that knowledge?

What does protection look like when the threat is disconnection?

How can the body relearn a relationship with land through material and form?

What does matriarchal power look like when it is embodied rather than inherited?

What if reclaiming power begins with listening to land, to body, to memory?

What does armour become when protection is defined as anchoring rather than hardening?

What are the limits of working with living materials in wearable form?

Main inspirations¶

Zena Holloway
Exploring speculative plant-based materials and future biological systems. She works with grassroots to produce fashion and interiors.
Diana Scherer
Growing plant roots into structured, textile-like forms.
Paula Ulargui Escalona
Designing with living systems and biofabricated materials.

Research Library¶

A living archive of materials, myths, and experiments

Main research papers: Seeds & Textiles¶

Svenja Keune
Textile Farming — Seeds as a Material for Textile Design

Why this matters to my project:
Keune’s concept of textile farming reframes seeds as an active design material, aligning with my approach of growing textiles through biological processes rather than producing them through conventional manufacturing.