Formal fashion at the Supreme Court modernizes as justices don new black robes

For 150 years, judges of the Supreme Court of Canada have donned distinctive red robes trimmed with white fur – a judicial fashion whose earliest threads stretch back through centuries of British history to the reign of King Edward III in the 1300s.

But that changed this week. As part of the Supreme Court’s 150th anniversary this year, Chief Justice Richard Wagner and his colleagues on the country’s apex court debuted a new formal fashion for special occasions. The nine justices entered the courtroom in Ottawa on Monday in black silk robes, trimmed with two vertical bands of red.