School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Illinois
1866
The original school colors of the Art Institute of Chicago were scarlet and buff, but today the official school colors are sand and teal. Additional information about the history of the institute’s colors is not available at this time.
Today, students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago do not wear academic costume to commencement exercises. But academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1948 and 1972 described the “Art Institute of Chicago” as having a hood lined scarlet with a buff chevron. That said, in the 1972 IBAC list, the Bureau also cited a hood lining for the “School of the Art Institute, Chicago” that was sand with a “Nile green” chevron – a chevron that was not precisely in the Institute’s “teal” (teal is a blue-green; Nile green is a yellow-green).
The Art Institute of Chicago was also cited by Kevin Sheard in both Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970), but with different descriptions of the school’s hood. In 1962 it was described as a:
black hood, trimmed with two bands stating at the neck and overlapping at the back. Right band is Sand colored with darker stripes. Left band is alternately Turquoise and Silver Gray.
In 1970 Sheard said that the hood
has a cowl made from folds of brown material lined with horizontal bands alternately of sand colour and blue material. Near the top of the cowl on the outside are two horizontal bands of brown velvet, the brown being just a shade darker than the brown material used for the outside of the cowl.
With a design like this, perhaps it is just as well that graduates of the Art Institute of Chicago do not wear academic costume. But if a hood were to be used, the post-World War Two design authorized by the Intercollegiate Bureau (sand with a teal chevron) would be the most sensible and attractive of the modern designs described above.