Wizard Clothes?

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 49148

Scheherazade asks:

> What, exactly, constitutes the difference between wizard clothes and muggle 
clothes?  So, are these just wizards that never manage to go anywhere outside 
the wizarding world?  We know from PS that they're not supposed to be seen by 
muggles in their robes, so what do these odd fellows do?<<

This is actually a fairly complex question. So this is going to ramble a bit. 
But it does all connect, if you stick around to the ending. Even if the 
summation would be less than a 10th the length.

Well, let's give this a bit of historical context, okay? Wizards lived among 
Muggles up to the end of the 17th century, and their lives depended on 
blending in. So wizarding dress would have been pretty much the same as 
Muggles' fashions up to the end of the Stuart era. Now, from a costuming 
standpoint, the later Stuart era is generally regarded as the beginning of 
"modern" dress. At least for men, having settled into a configuration of 
coat, waistcoat, shirt & cravat and breeches, stockings and shoes, to which 
it still roughly conforms. (Trousers have replaced the breeches and the 
waistcoat is most typically dispensed with, but the garments perform the same 
function regardless of their changes in cut, fabric and level of decoration.) 

Now, what I suspect, is that as soon as the wizarding world developed magical 
terchnology which allowed it to seal itself off from Muggle society, there 
was a celebratory movement with an aim to "returning to the glories of 
ancient wizardry" in which wizards who had probably never worn robes in their 
life suddenly adopted them, because "our forefathers wore robes, and so will 
I". Upon the whole, the actual historical accuracy of these robes was 
probably about as convincing as David's designs for his neo-classical 
"National Dress" commissioned by the French Consolate after the Revolution. 
Or the "Cavalier" dress worn by "The Blue Boy" which is to say, not very.

Consequently, I suspect that apart from the styles based on the traditional 
academic or legal robes still in use in those professions, or even the 
archaic robes worn by Peers for ceremonial Court functions, modern day 
wizarding "robes" are a highly imaginative ecclectic muddle, much in the 
manner of 19th century women's fashion with its multiple refernces to earlier 
eras. Rather as though the principles of what we are most familiar with as 
Post-Modern Architecture were applied to clothing, with a lavish hand.

Mind you, I also think that the "sealing off" of the wizarding world is far 
from complete. (And that the greatest resistance to it was from the sort of 
"great houses" which owned considerable land holdings, complete with 
primarily Muggle retainers.) Certain exclusively wizarding districts have 
been secluded into little "pocket universes" which are inaccessible to 
Muggles. But most of the British wizarding population is more simply 
concealed by Muggle-repeling charms and the like.

I also think that most staple goods used by the wizarding world have always 
been Muggle-produced. The chief industries of the wizarding world are those 
which produce specifically magical items, and the "service economy" which 
maintains the average wizard's quality of life. There has always been a cadre 
of wizarding merchants whose business is to "import" (and possibly duplicate) 
Muggle staple goods (foodstuffs, fabrics, lumber, etc.) and make them 
available for sale to wizards without the necessety of having to go out into 
the Muggle world. Consequently, some wizards have always been in the habit of 
"blending in". Others, have ventured into the Muggle world only rarely, and 
have gradually gone from appearing merely rather old-fashioned to seeming 
increasingly eccentric.

I also believe that until the early 19th century (after the enclosure acts) 
Muggle-born wizards were fairly rare. But that the forcing of thousands of 
rural families off the land and into the towns resulted in a mixing of the 
(incomplete) local [wizarding] genetic strains which resulted in a sudden 
increase in magical births among families which had no known wizarding 
ancestry. These magical children were subjected to the same conditions as 
their Muggle counterparts, with all the same lethaly dangerous risks 
attendant upon the mines, mills and factories of the early Industrial age. 
Well, we have been told of the sort of havoc a magical child can 
instinctively produce when frightend or at risk. And that these "magical 
breakthroughs" were percieved to be a considerable threat to the continued 
concealment of the wizarding world in general follows without much 
contradiction. 

At length, I contend that the Department of Magical Catastrophes commissioned 
the charmed quill now in Professor McGonagall's keeping in an attempt to 
pinpoint the potential trouble spots in order to facilitate a better 
deployment of personnel. (I also suspect that Arthur Weasley's philosophical 
forebearers made a mission of infiltrating the ranks of the Muggle do-gooding 
societies in order to bring about legeslation that lessened the liklihood 
that magical children would be subjected to such conditions in the first 
place.) The additional layers of bureaucracy which this entailed naturally 
suggests that once magical children in the Muggle world have been identified 
it makes sense to train and educate them and to utilize their talents for the 
good of wizarding society.

This, of course, presented a different sort of security risk. Short of 
actually kidnapping Muggle-borns and raising them inside the wizarding world, 
you cannot educate Muggle-born wizards without at least some contact with 
their families. Consequently, the campaign to "rescue" and educate 
Muggle-born magical children was shadowed by a concurrent rise in 
wizard/Muggle marriages and the increase in the birth of halfblooded wizards. 
Conservative wizarding families on the order of the Malfoys vocally deplored 
this trend. They were not alone.

Another effect of this trend has clearly been to increase the level of 
magical genetic data in the Muggle population, since the non-magical siblings 
of Muggle-borns and halfbloods are often only very "near-misses" from being 
magical themselves. With a bit more mixing of the various strains, these 
magical genes have tended to "prove outy" even more frequently, and the 
incidence of Muggle-born magical children has continued to increase. It is 
probable that by this time nearly half of the Muggle population of the 
British Isles (in Rowling's world) carry at least one or two potentially 
magical traits. Certainly, acording to her notes, fully one quarter of an 
average Hogwarts year are now Muggle-born. (Taking her 1000 students 
statement as a base, this would come to about 36-37 Muggle-born witches and 
wizards in an average year.) This trend shows no signs of abating.

This being the case, there is no doubt that there has been a growing 
awareness of Muggle social trends in dresss and thought within the wizarding 
world over the past 150 years or so. And in many cases this has led to either 
adoption, or to hybridization of Muggle and wizarding motifs in dress and 
wizarding society.

-JOdel