According to Nelson’s Encyclopaedia (1907), juniors and seniors at Villanova College were required to wear academic costume. Whether the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned the college a hood around this time not known, but the first IBAC record of Villanova’s hood assignment is from 1927. Here the university’s hood lining was described as Yale blue with two white chevrons, a pattern that was unchanged in subsequent IBAC lists.

Typically, the IBAC used “Yale blue” to describe a dark shade of blue, and in Academic Heraldry (1962), Kevin Sheard described Villanova’s hood lining as being navy blue with two white chevrons. The IBAC used two white chevrons to avoid confusion with the hood lining that had been assigned to Pennsylvania State University between 1905 and 1912 (navy blue with a white chevron).

Unfortunately, the hood lining the Intercollegiate Bureau had assigned to Villanova inadvertently duplicated the hood lining the Bureau had also assigned to Connecticut State University. It is unknown which of the two universities had been assigned this pattern first, so to correct this problem, here Villanova’s hood lining pattern has been redesigned to resemble the school’s athletic logo: a white lining with a tri-chevron of dark blue, light blue, and dark blue.