Excelsior College
New York
1971
Formerly “Regents of the University of the State of New York”, “Regents External Degree Program”, and “Regents College”
Detailed historical information about the purple and gold colors of the University of the State of New York is not available at this time.
The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood lining, which was tailored from silk. By 1927, however, for a handful of schools the IBAC used a velvet chevron on a silk hood lining instead of the standard silk chevron that matched the silk lining of the hood.
For degrees conferred by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, the IBAC designed a hood lining that was purple with a lemon yellow velvet chevron no later than 1927, according to an Intercollegiate Bureau list from that period. “Lemon yellow” was a phrase the IBAC sometimes used to describe bright yellow, which was heraldically identical to gold. IBAC lists from 1948 and 1972 modified the description of the velvet chevron to (plain) “yellow”. The Bureau assigned the University of the State of New York a lemon yellow velvet chevron to avoid confusion with hood lining the IBAC had already assigned to Northwestern University (purple with gold yellow silk chevron).
A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the University of the State of New York’s hood lining as purple with a standard (silk) gold chevron. These were the university’s correct colors, but this was exactly how Sheard described Northwestern’s hood.
Here this duplication has been resolved because Northwestern’s purple is actually a “royal purple” (dark purple). So Northwestern’s hood lining color has been corrected to royal purple, which means Excelsior College can use its historically-correct colors of purple and gold without duplicating the old assigned hood lining of another college or university. Thus the velvet chevron fabric is unnecessary.