University of Delaware
Delaware
1743
Formerly “Delaware College”
The blue and old gold colors of Delaware College were probably derived from Delaware’s state seal (adopted 1777) and state flag (adopted 1913), as well as the flag of Sweden, as many early European settlers in what is now Delaware were Swedish. Delaware’s seal and flag display the official state colors, which are “Colonial blue” and “buff”. The shade of “Colonial blue” has been variously defined over the years, but in the late 1800s and early 1900s it was generally understood to be an azure to medium blue color (not navy blue), whereas “buff” was a light brown with an orange or golden tint.
Wanting to echo these same “Colonial blue” and “buff” colors, Delaware College faculty selected blue and old gold as the college’s colors in 1889 prior to the college’s first football game, interpreting “Colonial blue” to be a medium shade of blue and “buff” to be an orange shade of gold (“old gold”).
The colors of Delaware College were cited as old gold and blue in A Dictionary of Men’s Wear (1908) by William Henry Baker, A Dictionary of Footwear (1912) by C.R. Rasmussen, and the 1917 edition of the World Almanac, and are confirmed by vintage souvenirs and memorabilia from Delaware College. However, a reference to blue and gold (not old gold) can be found in the lyrics of the university’s fight song, written in 1915. The mascot of the University of Delaware, and the state bird of Delaware, is the Blue Hen, which has colored feathers of a light to azure blue shade.
In 1953 the Delaware state legislature very precisely defined the shade of Colonial blue as “arno blue”, which is a medium greenish-blue (or teal) shade different from the traditional azure or medium blue color originally used in the state seal and flag. Closer to the traditional seal and flag color is the 1953 legislature’s definition of “buff” as “golden beige”, a good synonym for the University of Delaware’s “old gold”.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): old gold/blue (1917-1918); blue/gold (1934-1935)
The committee that wrote the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume sent a copy of the Code along with a list of schools and their colors to the Living Church Quarterly, which included this information in its 1896 edition (published in December 1895). The list of college colors the Intercollegiate Code’s authors appended to the Code was largely copied from the 1894 World Almanac. But some colleges and universities in the list did not appear in the World Almanac, so information about these colors was probably supplied by Cotrell & Leonard from their client records. Since Cotrell & Leonard was affiliated with the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), it seems reasonable to assume that the IBAC assigned hood lining designs to the clients of Cotrell & Leonard in the Commission’s list as early as 1895 or within a few years after that.
The blue and gold (not old gold) colors of Delaware College appeared in the Living Church Quarterly list but not in the 1894 World Almanac, which means Cotrell & Leonard was probably the source of this color information. And since Delaware was a client of that firm, the IBAC is likely to have registered a hood lining pattern for the college c.1895-96. This may have been a hood generically lined blue with a gold chevron.
The first authoritative IBAC description of Delaware’s hood did not appear until 1927, where it was more precisely stated to have a Yale blue lining with an old gold chevron. “Yale blue” was a synonym the IBAC used for a dark shade of blue, which means that the college must have sent the IBAC an uncharacteristically deep blue fabric sample which caused the IBAC to inaccurately assign Delaware a hood lining that was confusingly similar to the hood lining already assigned to Allegheny College (navy blue with an old gold chevron). IBAC lists from 1948 and 1972 repeated Delaware’s Yale blue and old gold citation, but in Academic Heraldry (1962), Kevin Sheard stated that the university’s hood lining was blue with a golden yellow chevron. In 1969 the IBAC had similarly revised the university’s hood lining description to blue with a gold chevron, which was unfortunately a duplication of the hood lining already assigned to Vincennes University no later than 1912.
To avoid confusion with the hood linings of Allegheny and Vincennes, here Delaware’s hood lining design has been restored to the university’s historic colors of blue and old gold from the late 1800s and early 1900s when Delaware’s hood lining pattern was assigned by the IBAC.