Wizard clothing

[naama_gat at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 21906

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Margaret Dean <margdean at e...> wrote:
> Susanne Schmid wrote:
> 
> > I've always imagined the robes as rather loose- to put
> > it in Muggle terms,very A-line- and if you don't wear
> > stockings underneath, but have naked legs, they are
> > not likely to cling at your legs. BTW, which material
> > are they made of (not the legs, the robes!)? JKR
> > refers to the Beauxbatons students as freezing because
> > of their thin silk robes, but nothing comes to my mind
> > about the material English robes are made of. Perhaps
> > it's really magical- warming when it's cold and cool
> > when it's hot.
> 
> My guess is that English wizards wear wool robes.  Wool comes in
> a lot of different weights, from light to heavy, and being a
> natural fiber, it "breathes" (and thus doesn't become stifling
> even in summer).
> 
> Personally I envision the use of robes at Hogwarts being rather
> like the (former, probably) use of gowns at the English
> universities like Oxford.  From what I can make out from reading
> fiction set there, gowns were worn over one's regular clothes,
> were mandatory for certain activities (such as attending
> lectures), but not worn all the time.  Though if robes are also
> traditional garb for wizards in general, Hogwarts students
> probably wear theirs more consistently than Oxford
> undergraduates.

I don't think that robes in the HPverse are worn over regular 
clothes - remember what's-his-name who "likes a healthy breeze around 
his privates"? He might wear something under his robes (socks?) but 
certainly not what we'd call regular clothes.

It's quite clear from the books that robes are the standard garments 
worn by wizards and that the black robes are the Hogwarts uniform. I 
don't know why they didn't adhere to that in the movie. There may be 
problems with how it looks when worn by masses of kids - a black, 
billowing mass, making it hard to differentiate one kid from another. 
Maybe. Anyway, since JKR is working so closely with the producers, I 
do have some confidence that they made this choice for some 
reasonably sound reason. 

Naama