So, in all TES games I've played, starting with Daggerfall, I always loved the fact that I was able to avoid one of the oldest, and most stupid stereotypes of fantasy games: "mages are fragile wussies who cant bear the weight of solid armor on their skinny shoulders, so they have to wear ugly robes and hoods and look like old monks". I think this stereotype goes all the way back to Tolkien's Gandalf, or game developers use it as a balancing tool (spellcasters have powerful ranged attacks, so we make them fragile when enemies manage to get close to them).
But in Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion I was always able to create a custom class, that could wear the heaviest (and COOLEST looking) armour sets, without any hindrance to his spellcasting abilities.
Now I started playing Skyrim, just a few days ago. The usual choice - High Elf, spellcaster, currently level 15 or something.
BUT. I am STILL wearing the robe and hood which I found in the starting dungeon, simply because the bonuses on them are HUGE for a spellcaster, and I havent found anything better yet. And all cool looking gear from slain enemeis ends up as vendor trash :S
Thing is, the robes and hood are so FREAKING UGLY, it pretty much made me stop playing my character. I dont want to run around looking like some crazy hermit, or travelling monk. I want to make mage that is powerful, and LOOKs powerful.
In previous TES games i could have that, but seems not in Skyrim? I leveled my Enchanting a bit and tried putting the enchantments from robes (+ magicka, + mana regen) on normal armour, but the results were pathetic. I got something like +10 magicka, +3% mana regen. just lol.
So my question is, if I want to play truly powerful spellcaster in Skyrim, will I HAVE to wear robes? The ugliness of robes is game breaking for me, currently I stopped playing my High Elf, and am considering my options what to do. Probably will have to restart the game and make a melee character, meh...

Uh... just learn enchanting and enchant your armour with the stuff you had on your robes. =/

Level up your enchanting Skill higher, that requires you to skill farm it but enchanting and smithing are probably the best skills to skill farm. I find those skill sets are ones you get the most out of when leveling them up it seems.

You have to level your enchanting pretty high before you can enchant anything better than you find (or level alchemy and make Fortify Enchanting pots...) but you will find armor sets that have a magicka reduction enchant for one magic type or another. I generally see these in shops more often than in dungeons.

Honestly though, the magicka regen is practically nothing in combat with or without enchants, so worrying about the regen enchant is pointless. The Fortify Magicka and Fortify [School] enchants are much more worthwhile. Armor is actually better than robes in most cases, unless you want to rely on wards/spells to increase armor, in which case the robes are better (if you get the relevant perks).

the higher level robes look pretty cool. Like adept robes. Novice robes look horrible.

daedric ftw

Last time I was a mage I played with armor and enchance my gear to make my destruction school cost zippo, next time I do a mage and actually complete the Trophies I need will be doing conjuration and destruction to cost zippo.

But I am waiting for Bethesda to fix the PS3 problem before I can continue to enjoy it, I fear it will become another Fallout New Vegas with how long they are taking and I wont care about the game by the time the fix does come around.

I actually find just about all robes in Skyrim to be ugly (besides the Greybeard ones but those are unobtainable for us console users). I leveled up my enchanting so that I could wear deadric with magic enchantments on them so I could do destruction+one-handed at the same time (since I got 100 destruction, sadly it didnt take as long as I thought., it level'd way to quick for a mage character but w/e).

Tbh, I miss the Order Priest Robes from Oblivion... I loved those lol they looked badass with a necromancer hood, hoping we get a DLC that will contain at least some form of new robes that look decent.

I actually miss the custom class thing from Oblivion lol. I had it all planned out for my character based on my experience with Oblivion, lets just say didnt work like I thought haha

I'm mainly disappointed that Destruction doesn't do much base damage, and if you want to do decent damage with it, you have to start juggling poisons and arrows and stuff. Spending 30 seconds in the menu to get a kill in 2 seconds? Not for me. Conjuration is less disappointing, but overall magic in this game is pretty weak, unless you don't mind spending half the game in the inventory screen.

Well I didnt like destruction magic in Skyrim until I made it cost 0 to cast, I found it to be great when it doesnt cost mana to cast your spells otherwise it svcks when it drains your magic

Do the College of Winterhold. I love the archmage robes. Look very cool on my high elf. It's the only guild I've done so far and my character is level 27. I'm looking for my last fire salt for the smith in Riften.

Even at 0 cost, I'm not a fan of taking 5 minutes chipping away tiny amounts of my enemy's health, or spending half my time in the inventory screen applying weakness to magic poisons. With actual weapons, you eventually get to a point where you can kill things quickly if you want, even on Master difficulty. That never happens with Destruction without lots of juggling.

find/buy/create prefered armor, find/fill/buy a grand soul gem, Disenchant "ugly" robes/hoods. Then use those learned enchants on the prefered armor using a grand soul gem.

To continue on this, wait until you have enchanting lvl 100 so you can do two separate Enchantments

Nothing wrong with playing an armored mage. I am. With fully-smithed Daedric and the majority of my level-up points put into Health (I got something like 400 health, 250 Magic, and only 110 in Stamina) at level 40, I'm pretty hard to take down. Add in Breton magic-resistance + Lord Stone + Mara's Blessing, and spellcasters and dragons can't put much of a dent into me either. Simply put, armor > robes, even for a mage in this game.

Destruction starts at as quite powerful on very low levels, then suddenly gets weak, and finally becomes powerful again. You WILL need dual casting, impact perk, and 100% spell cost reduction to be dominant with it. Also if you're on PC, look for a mod that tweaks the destruction damage output. There's one mod which adds 15% damage increase to every perk you select for Novice, Adept, Expert, etc. It's nicely balanced. To be honest, you really don't even need mods, since while Destruction itself has relatively low damage output (compared to smithed/enchanted weapons and backstabbing), you are able to a) attack at range affect multiple enemies (chain lightning, fireball) and c) stun-lock them with impact perk. Do it right and an enemy will never even get close enough to get a single hit on you.

But to cover my bases, I went for heavy armor to help with melee attackers and magic-resistance for spellcasters. That was very helpful in the midgame, but at this point, they usually don't get to touch me.

Hopefully you are PC, because you should try some destruction balancing mods. There's stuff that changes the 2.2 dual cast bonus to 3.0, or allows you to scale your destruction as you level up, or creates more powerful spells which work like flames/sparks. It's really the way destruction SHOULD'VE been in vanilla already. You won't have to rely on poisons or extensive inventory time. It really makes destruction completely viable as a primary way of damage dealing. Highly recommended.

I just got the Adept robes, and I like them.

Level 20 and my mage hasn't even started the College.

Actually I seem to recall that wearing armor in Morrowind and Oblivion both decreased the effectiveness of your spells, In Morrowind it dropped your chance to cast a spell and in Morrowind it dropped the amount of damage your spell did. I do agree that there don't appear to be that many types of robes, and they don't drop often enough, and you seem to have to wait a long time for the different levels to become available.

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/9446/wuxw.jpg

Does not look like a hermit to me. That pic is from fairly early in the game, at the west watchtower.

I liked the robes made me think my mage would be underestimated by his enemies what I don't like in skyrim is the lack of unenchantable hoods and robes that and destruction not scaling ruined mages for me IMO the psjic robes look awesome but you cannot even obtain them and the dark brotherhood shrouded hoods and robes look awesome but they don't come unenchanted there's THREE unenchanted robes and ONE unenchanted hood in the game I feel like skyrim forces you to wear armor with a mage

If you are going the enchantment rout like some here have said, try and get the Black Star from Azuras quest. It will help you get a ample supply of grand souls. =D

That was never the reason behind the armor restriction. Traditionally the lore says that armor (especially metal) interferes with casting, and not that it prevents your dexterity - it interferes with the magic itself.

Actually in Oblivion I'm pretty sure armor affected the spells effectiveness or something. But anyways, as said before, level up enchanting and keep any good soul gems you finds, preferably greater or better. I doubt you will find any random loot in dungeons that are enchanted armor, I don't remember finding stuff like that. But don't forget you can also wear one ring and necklace, usually finding those enchanted is fairly easy.