I have been reading posts, but stil have som complement questions.

As a mage manily relying on resto,destruction, and conjuration I would like to get some advice on what gear to go for.
I also put perks in smithing (since I love making my own stuff) and Enchanting to get the most out of my gear.

So far I wear my smithing elven stuff...Is that enough or should I start smith dragon-gear (from the scales)?

I also like to get my follower good gear...Dwarven for my heavy "tank" follower (Lydia is still my follower, coz I kinda like her...)

So any help or advice on what gear I should advance is highly appreciated

/Stefan

My mage only uses robes and Armor spells (currently using stoneflesh) so I don't think you need to go any higher than elven gear when you're using a tank-follower like Lydia. You can find Darwen gear around the world but steel armor or something might be good in the mean time?

I don't recommend Lydia as a follower for a mage. She gets in the way and severely limits your spell use. Any aoe spell can damage and kill her. It's a one shot death if she's down on one knee and that means no chain lightning, fireballs, runes, ect. I'd take another caster such as Marcurio or one of the mages from the college. You can both stand back and cast whatever without the fear of hurting each other. Leave Lydia at home where she's safe. It's not like you'll never see her again.

Gear is your choice. My mage only wore robes with no armor. And honestly smithing is a total waste of points unless you are making a spellsword type and enjoy doing face to face battles. If you are mostly casting there's no need to put points into smithing that could be allocated much better in another tree.

arch mage robe, morekei mask (%100 mana regen), both can be optainable trough college of winterhold series. Than destruction mana cost reduction on ring, and depends on choice dest-mana-cost-reduce or magicka on amulet (or vice versa)

What will be on amulet might be choose like, if you use dest a lot, go dest, if you conjuraction or if you have alteration etc too often, go magicka..

For follower, i'm also using lydia, and i'm also a mage wearing the items i mentinoned above, give lydia the armor with best armors basicly, like currently my lydia have orc shield, steel armor, orc gaunlet and leg, ebony 1h weapon and bow..

So basicly give the most armored one. But more important thing is as enchant;

Bow damage on ring/amulet, and health on other pieces i would say. because as garison64 said lydia will be buging you all the way, it really started to get annoying i really want to switch it, since today i finally got my storm atronach and dremora lord, they can succesfully fill the tank role. But yeah, health for lydia wou?ld be good to pretend her dying from your spells.

Also when casting spells dont directly aim at the enemy, aim more;

[aim] [enemy]X[lydia]

You see what i did there^^?

This should be ideal for you, My mage uses some harder to obtian items but I use the dragon priest mask Nahkriin (legendary), Arch-Mages robes, Dragonplate Gauntlets +30 magicka (legendary), Dragonplate Boots (legendary), Savos Aren’s Amulet, Ring of Peerless magicka.

I wear the dragon plate armor to have a half desent armor rating to take damage and also be an effective mage around a 308 armor rating without armor spells.

As for armor on Lydia I always give my followers Ebony/Daedric armor enchanted for whatever their best suited for (one handed, spells, etc).

In total I have 600 magicka to play with.