Wells College was an early client of academic costume manufacturer Cotrell & Leonard, according to “The Cap and Gown in America”, a May 1893 article in The University Magazine written before the creation of the 1895 Intercollegiate Code of Academic Costume by the Director of the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), Gardner Cotrell Leonard. The Cotrell & Leonard firm was also the depository of the IBAC. After the 1895 Code stipulated that the hood lining of a college or university would display the school’s colors in a pattern distinctive to that school, the IBAC began to register hoods for clients of Cotrell & Leonard.

According to the 1898 edition of the Michiganensian yearbook, Wells was still a client of Cotrell & Leonard at that time, which means that the IBAC probably assigned a hood lining pattern to the college at some point between 1895 and 1898. No description of the hood design was given in that 1898 advertisement, but a 1927 IBAC list stated that Wells’s hood lining was scarlet. This shade of red was inaccurate, as the school color was consistently listed in contemporary materials as cardinal.

Since the IBAC had already assigned a cardinal hood lining to the University of Wisconsin, here Wells has been reassigned a cardinal lining tailored from velvet fabric instead of the standard silk or satin, a variation the IBAC was using on rare occasions by the mid 1920s.