Hofstra University
New York
1935
The Hofstra University Board of Trustees selected royal blue and gold as the school’s colors in 1942. Because these colors are derived from the Dutch tri-color flag (blue, white, and orange) of William I, Prince of Orange, Hofstra often uses white as a tertiary color along with its official blue and gold. Hofstra’s flag is a horizontal tricolor: gold on top, white in the middle, and blue on bottom.
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume probably assigned a hood lining pattern to Hofstra University in the 1940s. It was royal blue with a gold chevron, a description found in Kevin Sheard’s Academic Heraldry in America (1962), Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), and in an IBAC list from 1972.
To avoid duplicating the hood lining assigned to Ursuline College in Ohio, here Hofstra’s lining pattern has been changed to resemble the heraldry of the university’s flag: gold above royal blue, separated by a white bar (what the Intercollegiate Bureau called a “zone”).