The Academic Dress of Doctors of Philosophy at the University of London

Abstract

Of the sixteen UK universities that instituted the PhD degree by 1920, of which London was the last, only London, Wales, and Birmingham specify a doctor’s full-dress pattern robe in a darker shade of red than scarlet. The warm red shade used for PhD robes at Wales and Birmingham has always been called ‘crimson‘ there, but at London the Medici crimson used was called ‘claret’ for reasons that remain obscure. Today the cloth used for PhD robes at London is considerably darker than crimson, almost a maroon, but Dr Isabel Soar’s robes show that this was not the case in 1920. It remains for London’s PhD graduates to prevail upon robemakers to restore their robes to the original bright warm crimson.