Poppin' collars and poppin' heads.
A high, flared collar is a common item worn by characters with mystical powers (whether magic, ESP, or something else).
This was long part of the look for people passing themselves off as mystics (along with turbans, head scarves, and crystal balls). Also, a high collar that fully concealed a wearer's head from behind was useful in certain stage-magic tricks that employ body-doubles. So this showed up in fiction for mystical characters.
A Sister Trope to High Collar of Doom (and overlaps with mystical villains), Robe and Wizard Hat.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- Shiroe in Log Horizon is an enchanter and strategist sporting a white and gold high collared cloak.
- In Rurouni Kenshin, Seijuro Hiko, Kenshin's instructor (and one of the only people in the world with any knowledge of the Hiten Mitsurugi style of martial arts/swordsmanship) wears a coat with a high collar like this. (It's a Shout-Out to the below-mentioned Spawn.) The coat is weighted, so that he can keep up with the amount of muscle-training the Hiten Mitsurugi style normally requires. At one point, he even confers it on Kenshin, who ends up not taking it.
Comic Books
- Doctor Fate, a supernatural magician, has high collars as part of his cape in some versions of his costume.
- Doctor Strange, sometime Sorcerer Supreme, wears a blue robe with a high collar, and his red cloak has an even taller one that forms two "horns" over his shoulders.
- Iron Fist, a Supernatural Martial Arts master, wore an extended collar until recently. Though the reasoning behind it was more due to the fashion of the times.
- Spawn's cape has a ridiculous collar for a sentient, hell-made cape.
- Wonder Woman (1987): The Fallen Hero villain the White Magician is a magic user who wears a red-lined white cape with a popped collar that reaches just past the top of his ears.
- Subverted with The Flash villain Abra Kadabra, who wears a cloak with an absurdly high collar as part of posing as a magic user, when he's actually a former Stage Magician from the 64th century, with access to Sufficiently Advanced Technology. Played straight after he sells his soul for real magic in Underworld Unleashed.
Films — Animation
- Madame Suliman in Howl's Moving Castle is the chief sorcerer to the king, and to fit her high position she wears a fancy dress with a fur-trimmed high collar.
- Schmendrick is a bumbling magician in the film of The Last Unicorn and wears a flared out collar on his cape.
◊
- The evil fairy Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty wears a black robe with a high collar.
- In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, Trixie's Impractically Fancy Outfit for the final concert sports an elaborate high collar, fitting with her Cute Witch thematic.
Films — Live-Action
- The wish-granting Zoltar machine in Big includes a bust of a bearded guy with a high collar.
- In the 1931 Dracula film, Bela Lugosi as Dracula sports a high-collared cape. And as in the book, his vampire abilities are supernatural, such as the ability to shapeshift and shroud people's minds.
- Mestema of The Dungeonmaster is an Evil Sorcerer who wears an extremely wide collar on his cloak.
- Jareth from Labyrinth has several powers, as he is the Goblin King, including many illusion powers. He has two outfits featuring high collars — the shining black one when he first appears, and the red leather jacket with the really high collar when he appears in the tunnels.
Literature
- In King Kelson's Bride, Liam wears a "long, high-collared coat all of pure white wool save for the black Furstáni hart emblazoned on his breast" for his magical investiture as padishah (called the killijálay).
Live-Action TV
- When wearing formal attire, the Time Lords of Doctor Who sport an ornate cloak-and-high-collar combination.
- Pick any magic user in Once Upon a Time and chances are they routinely wear a high collar, especially if they are villainous. More specifically, magic-users Regina, Rumplestiltskin, and Cora all sport high collars in their most iconic outfits.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Module T1 The Village of Hommlet. The costume of the magic-user Burne demonstrates this, as shown in this picture◊ of him and his friend Rufus.
- Module L1 The Secret of Bone Hill. The cover features a female mage wearing a red bodysuit with a high collar, as seen here◊. We know she's a mage because she's blasting another spellcaster with a Lightning Bolt spell, causing X-Ray Sparks.
- Module T1 The Village of Hommlet. The costume of the magic-user Burne demonstrates this, as shown in this picture
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The 2nd Edition models for Psykers have high, flaring and decorated coat collars about twice as tall as their wearers' heads.
- The Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels, Mephiston, has a psychic hood built into his armour, and it resembles one of these. Given the Blood Angels' love of blood-related imagery, it also doubles as a reference to the Classical Movie Vampire archetype.
Theater
- In the framing scenes that open and close Wicked, Glinda's dress has a high collar that doesn't seem attached to her dress.
- A major stage adaptation of Dracula in the 1920s gave Dracula a cape with a high collar for purposes of the kind of stage-magic trickery mentioned in the trope description. The cape went on to become part of the popular image of Dracula by way of the 1931 film which used the stage version as its basis.
Video Games
- Several of the Mesmer outfits in Guild Wars have high collars, some even just slightly flared out.
- The wizard classes in Ragnarok Online often include high collars, including◊ their fur-lined capes.
- Concept art for Ganondorf made for The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games shows the dark wizard with a massive collar.◊
- A number of magic-using classes in World of Warcraft have armor sets including collars as high as the back of the character's head.
- In Rune Factory 4, Arthur wears a cape with a very large, high collar and is never seen without his star-shaped spellbook, though he speaks very little of magic. Kiel talks about magic quite often, but only has a small collar on his capelet.
- When City of Heroes released their Super Booster II: Magic costume pack, one of the new pieces was a high collar for capes.◊
- The witch cloak in Dark Souls has a popped up collar. Though any class can wear it, it was initially worn by a witch NPC.
- Invoker from Dota 2 wears a massive popped collar. Based on the original Invoker from Defense of the Ancients, which used the Blood Mage model from 'Warcraft III''. Invoker is a particularly powerful wizard, able to memorize ten spells where most mages could handle two, and is near immortal. Pugna, in the same game, is an undead mage who has an absurdly popped collar.
- Dungeon Keeper: Warlocks, your primary spellcasting units, wear robes with collars higher than their heads for easy identification.
Web Comics
- In Agents of the Realm, stylish high collars seem to be part of uniform for Old World agents.
Web Original
- In Noob, Gaea, a Summon Magic user, has a high collar as part of her late Season 4 / Season 5 / fourth novel outfit.
Western Animation
- In My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Great and Powerful Trixie wears a cape with a flared collar. As she's more of a stage magician than a spellcaster like Twilight Sparkle is, this is an obvious attempt to invoke the look.
- Orpheus the magician in The Venture Bros., since he's an Expy of Doctor Strange and wears the same outfit.
Real Life
- Underground singer Klaus Nomi began wearing high collars and ruffs in the early 1980s. This was partly to go along with his interest in Renaissance music at that time and to add to the mystique of the otherworldly persona he adopted onstage, but mostly to hide the lesions on his neck caused by the AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma that would eventually kill him in 1983.
