To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

Villa Madonna College did not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, so the IBAC might not have assigned the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. The lining assignment was probably blue above white, divided per chevron. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) stated that Villa Madonna’s hood was royal blue above white, divided per chevron. Why Sheard described the upper color as a dark purple-blue (royal blue) instead of the college’s actual shade of blue is not known, but an IBAC list from 1972 seems to have been taken from Sheard, citing the hood lining as “royal blue over white”. These descriptions must have been erroneous, as they would have duplicated the hood lining the Bureau had already assigned to the University of New Hampshire prior to 1927. Here what was likely to have been the Intercollegiate Bureau’s original hood lining assignment for Villa Madonna has been used for Thomas More College, the institution’s name since 1964.