University of Colorado at Boulder
Colorado
1876
Until his death in 1921, Gardner Cotrell Leonard was the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) and a partner in the firm of Cotrell & Leonard, an academic costume manufacturer and the depository for the records of the IBAC. If one assumes that a college or university was assigned a hood lining pattern by the IBAC when academic costume was ordered from Cotrell & Leonard, client lists for Cotrell & Leonard can help one estimate the approximate date that lining pattern was approved by the IBAC.
The first time the University of Colorado appears in a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement is in the 1897 “Ole Miss” of The University of Mississippi yearbook, which suggests an IBAC hood assignment for the university in 1896 or 1897. The advertisement does not describe the colors or heraldic pattern of Colorado’s hood lining, but the university’s hood is cited in a 1927 IBAC list as having a gold lining with a silver gray chevron. “Silver gray” was one of several synonyms the Bureau used for “silver”.
This description does not change in subsequent IBAC lists.
The students of the University of Colorado selected silver and gold as the college colors in 1888. They were the white and yellow class colors of 1888 (symbolizing the colors of the daisy flower) redefined as silver and gold in honor of the mineralogical wealth of the state.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): gold/silver (1895-1900); silver/gold (1902-1935)
