[HPforGrownups] clothing in the Potterverse (rather long)

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 90189

Sigune wrote:
> - Harry went to a perfectly 'normal' (i.e. Muggle) primary school.
> Surely other wizard children (not to mention Muggle-borns) will have
> done so, too. As far as we know there are no wizarding primary
> schools. It has been suggested on other threads that wizard children
> below the age of eleven receive private tutoring; but surely that
> arrangement cannot suit every wizarding family? My guess is that even

The only thing that makes me wonder about this possibility is that it would
be a horrible breach of the Statute of Secrecy. I'm not speaking from
experience here, but I would imagine it would be extremely difficult to make
sure that primary school children keep schtum about their and their
families' ability to do magic, especially given the number of references to
that sort of thing in children's stories, fairy tales, and the like. I don't
think that most MM families would have private tutors (though the
aristocracy certainly would): it would just be that the parents would teach
the children what they needed to know, literacy, numeracy, the domestic
magic that's needed to function, and so on.

> pureblood family, have their house in London. Although it is
> (almost?) perfectly possible for magical folk to avoid all contact
> with Muggles (seeing they have their own transport, their own radio
> etc. etc.), I imagine that a fair number of them would in fact be in
> touch with Muggles on a regular basis. I mean, even a witch or wizard

There's a fair bit of canon evidence for this. The young Harry encounters a
wizard or two in his early years, much to the Dursleys' horror. But I
suspect that they use the same don't-notice-me magic that is used to make
their homes etc unnoticeable. They'd see us, but we wouldn't notice them.

> - As for clothes: maybe we are talking generation gaps here. I can
> imagine young wizards or witches being sensitive to Muggle fashion,
> whereas older ones may grow more conservative and go back to the good
> old robe. Wearing Muggle(inspired) clothing might be a way for young
> wizards and witches of expressing their youthfulness and distancing
> themselves from their parents' generation - ideologically and

I think this is more likely to be right than the idea that the Muggle
element coming into the WW are in some way the arbiters of fashion. I'm an
advocate of the "large" WW population theory, and within that theory it's
evident that the number of entirely muggleborn children is very tiny by
comparison with the number of wizard borns, too small to affect the culture
on its own. If there was a large number coming in, you just wouldn't have
the widespread ignorance of muggle behaviour that comes across so strongly
in the books.

> Maybe the adult wizards are simply losing their touch by being too
> absorbed in the WW. Besides, if wizards indeed have twice the
> lifespan of a Muggle, there can be little wonder that they can't keep
> up with all the fashion changes in the Muggle world.
> Besides I think they wouldn't be out of tune at some parties :).

Can you lose your touch by being involved in your own world? From a WW
p.o.v., it's perhaps people like Arthur Weasley who might be seen as out of
touch because of his fascination with someone else's world!

Maybe from a longer lifetime perspective, you're more likely to stick with
what's tried and true rather than trends that come and go from year to year.

> of great concern to me) I find that, although the robes may work
> perfectly in a novel and are indeed the kind of clothing wizards are
> identified with, they are a bit boring. Even taking into account that
> you can vary cloth, colour, neckline etc., basically what you get is
> a long dress that is sometimes combined with a cloak. Not visually
> challenging at all (well, at least not to me). So I would ardently
> defend the film designers' choices AND any wizard who decides to mix
> some Muggle clothing with his/her wizarding getup. *

You might also think about whether there are distinctively "ethnic" styles
of wizard garb. Robes may be appropriate to European wizards, but what about
African or Chinese wizards?

> - As far as money is concerned: in CoS Hermione's parents change
> Muggle money at Gringotts, I believe - or this might come from a JKR
> interview - my memory is letting me down, but I am 100% sure that I
> read somewhere that Gringotts change Muggle money. In any case I have
> been wondering about such simple things as food as well: do wizards
> buy their peas and potatos and steaks at strictly wizard shops? I
> doubt it. So they would need Muggle money anyway.

Once again I don't know how this would fit with the Statute of Secrecy. Who
knows what the goblins do with muggle money - a fascinating topic to wonder
about, that. But my own thoughts are that it's just not necessary for
wizards to do business with muggles. Maybe there's some sort of wizards'
market every week in various locations where wizard craftspeople and farmers
come to sell their wares...

> But I like to think that the WW is more mixed up with the Muggle
> world than it appears at first sight in canon; wizards and Muggles
> share, after all, their humanity, and the strict segregation between
> them sounds very Voldemortish/purebloodish to me. And then there are
> all those Muggleborn or mixed ancestry wizards and witches - what
> kind of people would they be to simply discard all their Muggle
> relations - school friends, neighbours, family etc. - once they
> realise they have magic in their blood?

The separation has gone on for a long time, for ten generations of Muggles.
I think that even before that, given the persecution of wizards, there was
an increasing de facto separation, in which the WW community kept to itself,
precisely because the cultural differences were hard to bridge. I don't
think it's in any way Voldemortish, though - that faction would probably
have responded to persecution by fighting back and seeking to enslave and
rule Muggledom.

Once again, it's worth remembering that the number of muggleborn children
each year is small - it would follow from the size of Hogwarts that there's
less than 40 a year, very small in comparison with the number of non-wizard
children. And that figure probably includes the children with one wizard
parent as well. I'm sure that they would keep in touch with their parents
(at least to the extent that everyone else does) though perhaps friends from
junior school would fall by the wayside. I'm certainly not friends with
anyone that I used to know back then, without changing cultures in between!

> Erm - am I proving myself an arch-Muggle here :)?

Remember that there are two perspectives, how muggles would see wizards, and
how wizards do see muggles - by no means the same.

Cheers

Ffred

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