Gardner Cotrell Leonard was the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) and also a partner at Cotrell & Leonard, one of the major manufacturing firms for academic dress in the United States. Because the relationship between the IBAC and Cotrell & Leonard was tight (contemporary materials described Cotrell & Leonard as the “depository” for the IBAC), it is likely that a school was assigned an academic hood lining pattern by the IBAC when that school made a purchase order for academic costume from Cotrell & Leonard. If this is correct, Cotrell & Leonard advertisements from the turn of the century can provide one with a rough estimation of the date when the hood lining pattern of a particular college or university was first registered by the IBAC.

The University of Missouri was first referenced (without a description of its hood) in a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in the 1897 “Ole Miss” of The University of Mississippi yearbook, which suggests an 1896 or 1897 registry by the Intercollegiate Bureau. The first full description of the university’s hood lining can be found in a 1918 IBAC list, where it was described as old gold with two black chevrons. The Bureau probably used two chevrons to avoid duplication with the hood already assigned to the College of Wooster (old gold with a black chevron).