The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) is likely to have initially assigned Colorado College a black hood lining with an old gold chevron no later than 1897 or 1898, because the college was advertised in 1898 as being a client of Cotrell & Leonard, the academic costume manufacturing firm that was also the depository for the IBAC. This was during a period when the college sometimes described its colors as black and old gold, and was consistent with a 1918 IBAC list where Colorado College’s hood was cited as having a black lining with an old gold chevron.

But in 1927 and 1948 lists the IBAC described the hood as having a single color lining of black (without an old gold or gold chevron). This was probably an erroneous description because in both Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) Kevin Sheard wrote that Colorado College’s hood lining was black with a gold chevron (the correct official colors from 1889). A 1972 IBAC list confirms these colors and pattern of the college’s hood.

The IBAC might also have originally assigned Colorado College an old gold chevron because the Bureau had already assigned Johns Hopkins University a black hood lining with a gold chevron in 1895.