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

The IBAC must have assigned a hood lining to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the late 1940s or 1950s because a description of the academy’s hood was not included in 1927 or 1948 IBAC lists. A compilation of hood lining information by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and a 1972 list from the IBAC both described Cranbrook’s hood lining as white with three red chevrons. That said, there is a significant difference in the two descriptions: the Intercollegiate Bureau stated that the three chevrons were of the standard type, but Sheard described them as being reversed chevrons of varying widths. Sheard did not describe how the chevron widths varied. Here what appears to be the official IBAC hood lining arrangement has been used, but Sheard’s variation remains a tantalizing alternative option if an original hood in that design can be verified.