It’s stripping off on a hot beach somewhere — not putting on 18th-century costume — that will be occupying the minds of most lawyers this week.

But wigs and gowns will undoubtedly be exercising them before too long. The Bar Council of England and Wales has launched a fresh consultation exercise on what must now be the longest running debate in the legal profession. What should advocates wear in court — and what is the future for horsehair headgear? Court dress is firmly back on the agenda, and again causing more than a few ruffles.

When Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers took over as Lord Chief Justice in April last year he must have thought that this was one of the easier issues to tackle. It had already been back and forth, subject to several consultations and aired inside and out. And he was quite clear as to his own views: he disliked the five different costumes he had to don according to season and favoured one simple continental-style gown. And no wig.

But achieving consensus on legal uniform has proved harder than extracting a pledge from ministers to protect the courts’ budget. Just before lawyers went off on their holidays at the end of July, Lord Phillips published plans for what seemed a sensible compromise. In criminal courts, the traditional court dress will stay, but in civil and family courts, wigs and the current gowns are to go — to be replaced by a simple black robe.

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That will please judges and lawyers who work in the criminal courts and who, along with the public, want to hang on to the worldwide emblem of the English legal system. And it will find favour with most commercial judges and lawyers who favour being rid of old-style legal costume: it causes bemusement among international litigants and does not help the promotion of London as a centre of modern dispute resolution. Family practitioners, too, often discard legal robes because their hearings are in chambers.

But not everyone is happy. Lord Phillips’s paper made clear that it was “expected” that advocates would adopt a similar dress code to judges. Yet, Geoffey Vos, QC, chairman of the Bar, said: “It is quite clear that there are strong views on both sides about the retention of wigs and gowns. The majority view in 2001 was that wigs should be retained in civil cases, but not in family cases, unless someone’s liberty was at stake. It will be interesting to see if this is still the case in light of the Lord Chief Justice’s pronouncement.”

He predicts a large number of responses. Views, he says, are mixed at the family, civil and commercial Bars and he cannot predict what view will prevail. But he adds: “The judges are going for the Euro gown that covers all other clothes. I doubt, but I do not know, that barristers would want to change their existing gowns.”

Even among judges there may not be complete assent. The new, simple, continental-style black gown for all non-criminal judges — to be colour-coded either by a sash or cuffs according to rank — has yet to be designed: Betty Jackson, the designer who has agreed to take on the job, is no doubt being besieged with arguments from all sides.

So depending on the outcome of the Bar consultation (deadline for responses is October 15), barristers may break ranks with their judicial colleagues. At the very least, there is a definite whiff of revolt in the air.

All is not gloom, however. There is delight among solicitor-advocates who will now be dressed the same as barristers. They have battled for years to be recognised as being equal to their counterparts in the criminal courts and for the right to wear wigs. They have long argued that they were treated as second-class lawyers and that criminals would say: “I want a proper lawyer, one who wears a wig.”

Yet even this move has infuriated some. Stanley Best, a solicitor-turned-barrister, and chairman of the association of small firms called the British Legal Association, gives warning that if this is allowed, then the “more pretentious” solicitors will soon be styling themselves Queen’s Counsel, “and get away with it”. He says that he has yet to hear of one regional solicitor who “wants to pose as a barrister” and laments that some district judges are now seeking dining rights at one of the Inns of Court.

“Where will these aspirations lead to, unless firmly knocked on the head?”, he fulminates. Soon the public would not be able to “tell chalk from cheese” and those solicitors who had gained this foothold would, “emboldened by their success, be storming the barricades at the Inns of Court and the Bar”.

The new court dress code is due to come into being on January 1. Lord Phillips must already be looking with relief at his continuing constitutional clash with ministers over the Ministry of Justice. Wigs are clearly far too hot to handle.

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