Taylor University
Indiana
1846
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): brown/lavender (1900); purple/old gold (1902-1904); royal purple/old gold (1917-1918); purple/gold (1923-1935)
To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau occasionally employed was a “triple chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the triple chevron pattern used three chevrons of about 1½ inches in width placed approximately two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them.
After it supplied the Intercollegiate Bureau with samples of its school colors, Taylor University was assigned a hood lining that was old gold with three purple chevrons, according to IBAC lists from 1927, 1948, and 1972. The IBAC tended to abbreviate its descriptions of “royal purple” to “purple”, so a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) was more accurate, describing Taylor University’s hood lining as old gold with three “deep purple” (dark purple) chevrons.
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume may have assigned Taylor three chevrons to avoid confusion with the similar hood lining already assigned to Iowa State Teachers College (today the University of Northern Iowa), which was old gold with two purple (not royal purple) chevrons.
The original school colors of Taylor University were lavender and brown, but around 1900 the lavender darkened to become “royal purple” and the brown brightened to become “old gold”. The university did not consistently use those terms, however, and often described the colors as “purple” and “gold”.
