Nazgûl clothes: visible and invisible

[Gordis]

I decided to open a separate thread to discuss the fascinating subject of nazgul clothing.

It has started in the Barrow-wights thread here: http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=153

Originally Posted by Gordis

The nazgul do have material bodies. They are faded into invisibility, visible only in the Shadow World, but material nonetheless.
Frodo's clothing disappears with him because he wears the Ring. Nazgul clothing remains visible because the nazgul do not wear their Rings - Sauron keeps the Nine himself. When the nazgul desire to go around invisible, they have to remove the clothing (as in UT-Hunt for the Ring), because Sauron doesn't deign to lent them their Rings.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Not to turn this into a Nazgûl discussion, but surely they did not go around naked most of the time (even though invisible)! I'd always thought them to be clad in whatever they had been wearing when they had 'faded' when invisible to eyes (or as you said, like Frodo when he puts on the Ring). They were then obligated to put on additional garments in order to be seen by all but Sauron. Frodo, when wearing the Ring, was able to see their original clothes.
(Frodo) was able to see beneath their black wrappings. .......Under their mantles were long grey robes; upon their grey hairs were helms of silver; in their haggard hands were swords of steel. FOTR p221. (paperback)
None of that was visible to any of the others present on Weathertop. Just the black stuff.

That is correct. Although the unclad (cloakless and bootless) nazgul were called "naked" by Tolkien (in the Hunt for the Ring), surely they didn't go around literally naked. To have no other clothing but cloaks would have been quite inconvenient when riding a horse. But the cloaks and boots, unlike the rest of their garments, were quite ordinary physical clothes - visible to everybody. Gandalf said:

The black robes are real robes that they wear to give shape to their nothingness when they have dealings with the living

After the WK was slain by Eowyn, the visible ordinary clothes remained on the battlefield: the crown, the hauberk, the black mantle.

But beneath the cloaks the nazgul wore white and grey robes and helms of silver, visible only in the Spirit world. Frodo saw it twice: at Weathertop when he put on the Ring and at the Ford when his wound drew him into the Wraith-world:

He could see them clearly now: they appeared to have cast aside their hoods and black cloaks, and they were robed in white and grey.

An interesting matter is the nature of those invisible inner garments. Were they material, but invisible? Could they be changed, taken off, washed, mended? Or were they totally illusion- spectral garments of their fëar? What would one feel if one touched an “unclad” nazgul: bare flesh or “ghostly” clothes?

I tend to think that much like the nazgul bodies, the clothes were material, but invisible. They could be touched.
If the visible clothing consisted only of cloaks, boots and gloves, it would be reasonable for the nazgul to don something else as well – invisible but material – on their material bodies and not ride their horses practically naked. That is the drawback of the idea of immaterial, ghostly clothes.

However, the idea of two sets of material clothing (visible and invisible) seems a bit weird – for practical reasons.
It couldn’t have been the same clothes they had worn when fading - back in the Second Age. Like everything else in the world, the material clothes would decay during the millennia, and fall to nothingness. They would have to be replaced.

Now a question arises: where do you shop for invisible clothing?

Maybe when a nazgul wears something ordinary for some period of time, the garment gradually becomes invisible as well? That is how they could restock their invisible wardrobe. But it is somehow weird: to have garments displaying different degrees of transparency.

Also, their long grey robes, seen by Frodo at Weathertop seem to be very unpractical for travel. Why not wear clothes more suitable for riding, if they could choose the invisible clothes? Why don a kingly crown while on secret mission? If one puts on a helm and then a crown and covers all this with the hood of his visible cloak, wasn’t the material crown’s shape still recognizable under the hood? This issue would not arise if it were but a nebulous crown, an illusion.

Anyway, I find all this confusing. I can’t say I have a firm opinion on the matter.