Drake University
Iowa
1881
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/white (1900-1906); Yale blue/white (1908-1912); blue/white (1913-1914); Yale blue/white (1915); blue/white (1916-1935)
Although it may have been assigned earlier, the academic hood lining design for Drake University was first cited in a 1918 Encyclopedia Americana article on academic costume written by Gardner Cotrell Leonard, the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC). Leonard stated that the university had been assigned a hood lining that was white with an azure blue chevron. By 1972 the IBAC had interchanged the colors to create a hood lining that was azure blue with a white chevron. Here the original Intercollegiate Bureau pattern has been retained.
One should note that after receiving a fabric sample from Drake the IBAC described the shade of the university’s blue as “azure”, which was brighter and lighter than the “Yale blue” (dark blue) shade sometimes cited for Drake, but entirely within the range of bright to medium blue shades the university used at the time.
Drake students adopted blue and white school colors in 1894. The shade of blue was not precisely defined, and vintage tobacco cards, silks, pennants, postcards, and other Drake memorabilia from the late 19th and early 20th centuries display a wide range of blue shades including bright blue, medium blue, and dark blue.
Likewise, color information Drake sent to the World Almanac in the early 1900s varied between “blue” (which could mean azure blue or medium blue) and “Yale blue” (dark blue). In 1962 researcher Kevin Sheard described Drake’s blue as “royal blue” (a dark shade of purplish-blue) in his book Academic Heraldry in America.
