Why lawyers want to look hot in July

This week, Delhi High Court provided much joy to Delhi's public prosecutors when it issued directives at improving their 'working conditions'. If the FM's job was to make the country happy - or, at least, not unhappy - in her budget speech, the high court was to do the same for lawyers in the Capital. But one thing seems exceedingly odd to us all over again. No, not so much that the court recognised the need for adequate professional attire for public prosecutors by ordering an annual dress allowance of ₹10,000, but that these lot still prefer wearing those long black robes with a sticky white collar as if they ply their legal trade not in the tropics but in the Inns of Court in autumn.

'Given the formal attire required in court, it is appropriate to grant a dress allowance to public prosecutors,' the court order read. What it didn't 'read' was why they like wearing black (heat-absorbing) robes and starched collars from some foreign period drama during Cornwallis' time, and not just formal professional clothes like any other profession? The public prosecutors like to 'fancy dress', we suppose, in accessories that have their origins in the black mourning robes that English lawyers wore after the death of the earlier King Charles in 1685. Why don't they take the ₹10k dress allowance but wear something less mournful and 17th c?