The Proper Cut & Color

The American professor seldom unpacks his academic robes for anything except founders' days and commencement, but the Oxford don swathes himself in proper hues for every day, is well aware when he is within nodding distance of such colleagues in full dress as a doctor of philosophy (scarlet and navy blue) or a doctor of music (cream silk with apple-blossom embroidery and sleeves of cherry crimson).

For years Oxford scholars have been uneasy about certain mutations in academic plumage. Shortly after World War II, hard-pressed tailors took to making gowns of nylon instead of silk, even trimmed the hoods of bachelors of arts with nylon fur instead of ermine or white-dyed rabbit. Worse yet, many Oxonians were showing up in startling shades of the traditional colors. Reason: in the university's seven centuries, no one had ever specified the precise shades for the various degrees. Around the faculty's high tables in college dining halls, the old guard eyed the robes of the innovators and grumbled of "notorious inconsistencies."

Last week the university's sartorial rebels were sharply summoned into line by a new handbook that spells out once and for all the color and cut of the proper Oxonian's robe. Compilers of the authentic landbook: meticulous Ralph E. Clifford, lead clerk in the University Registry, and elegant Dennis R. Venables, co-proprietor of one Oxford tailor shop and Dartner in another.

To choose patterns and shades for each degree, Clifford and Venables spent a year poking through ancient records and sifting the lore of tailors along High Street. Bound in leather, handwritten on parchment and illustrated with swatches of material, their specifications are stored for the ages in the University Archives. One fiat of the new book: nylon fur is out. Sniffs Gentlemen's Tailor Venables: "Any fur on an academical hood ought to come from an indigenous animal."

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