DePaul University
Illinois
1898
Formerly “St. Vincent’s College”
DePaul University students adopted cardinal and light blue as their school colors in 1899, but according to Our College Colors (1949) by Henry L. Snyder, the light blue had evolved to a darker shade of blue by the end of the 1940s, which meant that DePaul’s school colors were identical to those of the University of Pennsylvania.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): red/blue (1917-1918); blue/red (1923-1931); cardinal red/ciel blue (French for “sky blue”) (1934-1935)
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described DePaul University as having a hood lined blue with a red chevron. It is not known whether this was a hood lining pattern that had been officially assigned by the Bureau or merely a record of the university’s school colors applied to a hypothetical hood lining arrangement, but since the same description appeared in hood lining lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), DePaul was probably assigned this hood lining pattern by the IBAC in the late 1910s or early 1920s.
Unfortunately the Intercollegiate Bureau did not specify the precise shades of red and blue, which means DePaul’s hood lining description was potentially identical to the hood linings of a number of other colleges and universities. Here the correct (early) shades of red and blue have been used.