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 frequently employed was a “double chevron”. The typical width of a normal chevron was between three and four inches, but the double chevron pattern used two chevrons of about 1½ inches in width placed two inches apart so that the color of the hood lining showed between them.

The Intercollegiate Bureau assigned Albion College a hood lining between 1920 and 1927, when an IBAC list described the lining as purple with two gold chevrons. However, this list also cited several other schools with identical lining patterns: Baltimore Law School (MD), Defiance College (OH), Denver Conservatory of Music (CO), Scio College (OH), and Union Christian College (IN). All but Defiance College were defunct by the time the 1927 IBAC list appeared, so perhaps some of what appear to be duplicate patterns were actually the assignments for defunct schools that had been reassigned to new schools.

In any case, Albion appears in 1927, 1948, and 1972 Intercollegiate Bureau lists as having been assigned a purple lining with two gold chevrons. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as royal purple with two lemon gold chevrons. This citation is slightly misleading because Albion’s colors were actually purple and gold.