The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) was affiliated with the academic costume firm Cotrell & Leonard. One of the partners in this firm, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, was also the Director of the IBAC. So one way to estimate the date a school was assigned a hood lining pattern by the Bureau is to note when that school was first advertised as being a client of Cotrell & Leonard.

Colby College first appeared in a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in the December 1895 edition of the Yale Literary Magazine (published very soon after the final draft of the Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume was completed on 16 May 1895), then in a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in the 1896 Illio yearbook of the University of Illinois, and then in a 9 July 1896 newspaper article in the Indianapolis News, which mentioned Colby as one of a number of colleges and universities that used academic costume. These references suggest an IBAC registration in 1895 or 1896.

None of these sources described the hood pattern assigned by the Intercollegiate Bureau. The first definitive IBAC list with this information was published in 1927, where Colby’s hood lining was described as “Yale blue above silver gray”, indicating a heraldic division of the two colors per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Per chevron was more common at this early date, so this was probably what the IBAC had assigned Colby. “Yale blue” was the term the Bureau used to describe a dark blue shade, and “silver gray” described a light gray shade that resembled a pearlescent silver when tailored from the satin fabric of the hood lining. By 1948 the Intercollegiate Bureau had modified these color descriptions to “blue” and “silver”, most likely to better define the latter according to the “pearl gray” shade of the school color.