Hobart College was a client of academic costume manufacturer Cotrell & Leonard in 1902, according to Concerning Caps, Gowns and Hoods: Bulletin 17 (1902). As Cotrell & Leonard was also the depository of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), the IBAC had no doubt assigned a hood lining pattern to Hobart by 1902 at the latest. But no description of the college’s hood is given in that catalogue.

An undated regulation in the Hobart College Bulletin Vol. II No. 4 (July 1904) stated that the Board of Trustees “have resolved that hereafter the regular Intercollegiate Code of Caps, Gowns and Hoods shall be that of Hobart College, and that the traditional College Colors, orange and royal purple, shall be used for all such purposes. The arrangement of colors in the hoods has been fixed, and can be ascertained from the Secretary of the Trustees, or from Cotrell and Leonard, of Albany, N.Y.”

The first definitive and complete Intercollegiate Bureau description of Hobart’s hood was in a c.1912 list which said that the “official colors of Hobart College are Orange and Royal-purple and the hood lining is arranged as a ‘parti-per-chevron’ with orange above purple instead of the usual combination of one color as a chevron upon the other.” Even in this description the shade of Hobart’s purple varied, and by 1927 the IBAC had changed its hood description from “royal purple” to “purple”. But otherwise Hobart’s hood design did not change in any subsequent IBAC list. The Bureau probably assigned Hobart a per chevron pattern to avoid confusion with the hood lining already assigned to Dubuque College (orange with a purple chevron; today called “Loras College”).