In all the TES games I always liked the Elven armor. I just thought it was cool (especially in TES II) and never had a problem with my character wearing it, in fact they would seek it out.

But now, 200 years later in the TES world, I cannot disassociate Elven armor with the Thalmor. I just can't. Every Nord I've played uses light armor and they always skip wearing Elven armor and wait until they can make Scaled because I just can't image my Nord wanting to wear the bloody Thalmor/Elven armor. I can't even use the elven weapons due to this stigma.

And I hate this because I think the Elven armor in Skyrim looks very cool, but how do you justify anyone other than a Altmer (who are usually mages and don't wear armor anyway) wearing Skyrim Elven armor? So now it seems that all I can use the armor for is loot.

Law-Giver's Housecarl, a big, burly Nord and Stormcloak supporter wears Elven Armor, so think of him instead.

I decorate Honeyside with Elven Weapons too. Mostly because the shield has golden swords.

I must admit I only use Elven Armour if I'm playing an elf, it looks pretty good on my High Elf battle mage. I usually go with scalemail and glass for any other races though.

http://images.uesp.net/4/45/SR-npc-Unmid_Snow-Shod.jpg

Somehow that image doesn't help. I never noticed him before but he really looks out of place with that stuff on.

Yeah, during battle I got tired of mistaking Janessa with the Thalmor. My Bosmer wears smithed fur armor. I finally gave Janessa some of the same fur armor. I like the elven shield, but I keep associating the armor with the Thalmor.

Same here. I just couldn't get my Dunmer to wear it so I switched to something else until I got Glass. I use Elven weapons though, they look pretty awesome.

I found a http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=6524. It's made it easier for me to wear the golden stuff without feeling wrong somehow.

Dragon scale armor rocks

Like Arcona Cor, I like Elven weapons, mostly for the weight-to-damage ratio.
At least Elven armor doesn't make men look busty, and I like improving the gauntlets for archery.
But those roach killers are so bad for the toes.

I guess you could justify it by saying you're taunting the Thalmor by wearing something you took off of one of their representatives that you killed. And if you improve it by Smithing that's an additional insult because you made it better than they could.

As for the Glass: the Thalmor soldiers wear it in my games when I get to higher levels.

Do they really? Honestly the highest level I have gotten a character before retiring them was 45 and I never saw anyone ever where glass. I was wondering if Glass armor is also considered an elvenish armor.

Ah, both of mine are past 50 so that could be the point, but, yeah, I've seen them wearing it...even in the Embassy during Diplomatic Immunity.

It looks Elvish to me - very wingy/feathery.

Buckom's right on the money. I did the quest to free that Gray-Mane guy at level 40 or so, and most of the guys there had glass armor. Now I'm at level 62 and for the past ten levels or so, whenever I see the Thalmor walking on the road, they almost always have glass armor.

You've got the "money" part right. I made 4 trips back and forth to gather all that armor - I wasn't about to leave all that behind.

I just parked my pack mule outside. Janessa's not going anywhere anyway.

This was before I was dragging Mjoll around with me everywhere. ...and I was too lazy to creep through to get to Shadowmere even so I made multiple trips.