This year Nano Nagle Place is marking 250 years of continual use as a convent. As part of our summer exhibition, we worked with seamstress Sam Wynn to recreate styles of habit that we did’t hold in our archive.
Using a book of rules that described how much fabric was to be used in the habit, and how it was intended to look, Sam was able to remake the habit which the Presentation Sisters began wearing in 1805 until it was modified 1943, when the decision was made to remove the train at the back of the skirt. Along with this oldest style of habit she made a postulant’s dress, which we also didn’t have the oldest version of, a 1950s habit, and a post Vatican II habit.
Hear Sam talking about her work on Changing Habits here …