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. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau employed was a “reversed chevron”. Here the standard chevron of between three and four inches in width was inverted so that the chevron pointed upwards.

To avoid duplicating the hood lining the IBAC had already assigned Walla Walla College (green with an orange chevron), the Bureau assigned La Verne College a green hood lining with an orange reversed chevron in the late 1940s or 1950s.

By the early 1960s the shade of green the college was using had apparently lightened and brightened because a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described the college’s hood lining as “emerald green” with a reversed “gold orange” chevron. (For vintage collegiate memorabilia, “gold” and “orange” were sometimes synonymous descriptions of the same shade of non-metallic fabric.) An IBAC list from 1972 also stated that La Verne’s hood lining was “emerald green”, but retained the original “orange” description of the reversed chevron.

Here the original “true” green shade of La Verne’s hood lining has been restored.