University of Wyoming
Wyoming
1886
Two explanations have been given for the brown and yellow colors of the University of Wyoming. One story says that a faculty committee was formed in the 1890s to select colors for the university. A member of this committee was horseback riding one weekend and was moved by the beauty of a field of brown-eyed Susan flowers, which are native to southeastern Wyoming. The committee was equally inspired, and selected brown and yellow as the university’s colors. Another story says that the first University of Wyoming alumni banquet was held in 1895 and was decorated with brown-eyed Susan flowers. Because the flowers were so beautiful, the alumni voted to make brown and yellow the university’s colors. Whichever story is true, the university’s brown was consistently a dark shade and its yellow was consistently a golden shade, so yellow and gold were used interchangeably for the next half century. During the 1950s Wyoming’s brown and yellow colors were officially changed to brown and gold.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): brown/gold (1909-1911); brown/yellow (1912-1935)
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the hood lining of the University of Wyoming as brown with a gold chevron. However, a 1969 list from the Bureau described the hood as brown with a yellow chevron, and lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) also described the university’s hood lining as brown with a yellow chevron.
This apparent discrepancy in the color of Wyoming’s chevron was due to the fact that Cotrell & Leonard, the academic costume manufacturer and depository for the Intercollegiate Bureau, did not use fabric with metallic threads, so “yellow” satin fabric was often used for “gold” school colors and vice versa, particularly if the yellow satin had a slightly orange (or “golden”) tint.
In the case of Wyoming, “yellow” or “gold” fabric would have been acceptable because they are heraldically identical and because both were being used by the university at that time. Here Wyoming’s original colors of brown and a golden shade of yellow – the official colors when the IBAC assigned the university a hood lining pattern – have been retained.
