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Court dress is referred to the traditional garments council must wear while in the presence of a high, or supreme, court trial. In nearly all of the common law practicing countries, modified forms of mandatory court dress are present, with many common themes inter-connecting them. All modern common law court dress is derived from the 16th and 17th centuries in Britain, where the use of powdered wigs and long draping gowns was conceived. Over the past 4 centuries, there has been very little in the way of evolution of these original garments, with judges and barristers still resembling their long-gone predecessors.

Two hundred years ago powdered wigs were all the fashion in courts in the British Commonwealth, as they were a mark of high status. Most countries that practice common law utilized these wigs at some point in history, resulting in them remaining a prevalent symbol of the judicial system in Canada to this day.