Early Academical Dress
Like judicial dress, academical(1) dress has its origins in the everyday dress of the mediæval clergy, whose ecclesiastical dress in turn probably derived from civilian attire at an earlier age. Mediæval university scholars had, as clerks, to wear the clerkly gown and the tonsure.(2)
It is improbable that a distinction was made at first between dress and various academic levels as the degrees of bachelor and master do not seem to have originated until the thirteenth century. No academical dress, as such, was accorded the undergraduate in the early middle ages. Academical dress was originally a distinction accorded only to masters, unless the founder of a college prescribed a special livery for members.(3)
Early regulations do not so much prescribe what members must wear as prohibit excesses. Statutes relating to the costume of members of the universities must be regarded more in the light of sumptuary regulations than as a requirement of academical dress as the term is now understood.(4)
The history of academical dress is closely linked to that of the university education. Academical gowns used today throughout the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world are generally identical to or closely modelled on those worn at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge.(5) Those two universities have longer and more elaborate sartorial histories than any other European universities.(6)
Although there have been few far-reaching changes since the Laudian code of 1636, the gowns of Oxford have fallen into chaos, not having been revised since 1770. The university had patterns created for itself in 1957,(7) and these new rules are outlined in the Statutes of the University of Oxford.(8) But the tendency has been to follow the much more logical Cambridge precedents, which are the result of the revision of its dress code in 1932-34. New Zealand universities follow the Cambridge pattern.
(1) The term academical dress is used in preference to academic dress, as academic is an adjective, and academical a noun. Other expressions commonly encountered are academicals, and academic regalia. Regalia is, of course, a particularly inappropriate term since it refers to the rights accorded to a sovereign by the civil law, and by derivation to the royal jewels used at solemn occasions, particularly the coronation. Its use for academic, or civic insignia or dress is incorrect.
(2) The illustration of scholars in Richard de Leycestria's Summa in the Cambridge University Library (CUL Add Ms 3471 saec. xii med/esc), fos 125ra-169vb), referred to by Dr Hackett, which shows neither the cappa or the pallium, but the robes of a professor of rhetoric of classical antiquity, should not be taken as authority for what was actually worn. See Hackett, Rev Fr Benedict, The Original Statutes of Cambridge University: The Text and its History (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970) 147.
(3) See Rait, Robert, Life in the Mediæval University (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1918) 100-1; Franklyn, Charles, "Academical Dress- a brief sketch from the twelfth to the twentieth century, with especial reference to doctors" in (1946-7) 9(2) Oxford 78 at 81.
(4) Hastings, Very Rev'd Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (first published 1895, new ed FM Powicke & AB Emden, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1936) vol 1 p 194. The sumptuary laws were mostly repealed in 1603, and had never been particularly effective.
(5) The expression gown would appear most appropriate for undress, with robe referring to the full dress.
(6) Hargreaves-Mawdsley, WN, A History of Academical Dress in Europe until the end of the Eighteenth Century (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963) vii.
(7) Register of Colours and Materials of robes and Hoods for Degrees of the University of Oxford, prepared by the Oxford Branch of the National Federation of Merchant Tailors, approved by the Hebdomadal Council, and deposited in the University Archives 12 February 1957. See, Venables, DR and Clifford, RE, Academic Dress of the University of Oxford 2nd ed 1966 Oxford, 1st ed 1957).
(8) Statuta Universitis Oxoniensis (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960).