According to information from the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) recorded in the 1897 Living Church Quarterly (published in December 1896), the IBAC registered the New York Law School as having the hood lining colors of cherry red and black in 1896, but the heraldic pattern used to separate these colors was not described in the Intercollegiate Code or in the Living Church Quarterly. When a school had two colors, the IBAC tended to use a chevron to divide those colors in the lining of the hood, and later interpretations of these early school color lists often assumed that the first color referred to the hood lining and the second color referred to the chevron.

For example, the first definitive description of the hood lining for the New York Law School was in an IBAC list from 1927, where it was stated to be cherry red with a black chevron, an assignment that remained unchanged in all Intercollegiate Bureau lists thereafter. Unfortunately this hood lining pattern was too easily confused with the scarlet lining and black chevron of Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Today New York Law School uses a light blue hood lining with a white chevron, which is identical to the hood lining of Columbia University, also located in New York. To avoid this problem, the hood lining for the New York Law School has been reassigned a unique pattern that will not be confused with Columbia’s: white with a reversed (inverted) light blue chevron.