How Can Academical Dress Survive in the Third Millennium?

Transactions of the Burgon Society, Dec 2010

Academical dress enthusiasts have observed—with a mixture of sadness and consternation—the decline of academical costume during the last several decades. There can be little doubt that academical dress is now absent from such settings as grammar schools and university lecture theatres, where it was once regarded as the norm. For many, academical costume is regarded simply as an historical curiosity, the somewhat bizarre attire that garnishes the graduation day with the quintessential trappings of medieval English ceremonial. Despite this, special interest groups have emerged with the intention of promoting the wearing of academical costume over and above its use in graduation ceremonial, both on a national and local basis. These groups, whilst not necessarily promoting the rigorous scholarly engagement with the history, design and practice of academical dress that characterizes the mission of the Burgon Society, nevertheless attest to a perceived need actively to encourage the preservation of academical costume. [Excerpt].

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How Can Academical Dress Survive in the Third Millennium?

Transactions of the Burgon Society Transactions of the Burgon Society Oliver James Keenan 0 0 University of Oxford Recommended Citation Keenan, Oliver James (2010) "How Can Academical Dress Survive in the Third Millennium?," Transactions - Article 6 Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/burgonsociety How Can Academical Dress Survive in the Third Millennium? by Oliver James Keenan Introduction: the criminalization of ornament If Austrian architectural scholar Adolf Loos’ maxim that ‘the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects’1 was extrapolated to cover matters sartorial, the existence and development of academical costume would rapidly be confined to the annals of history, and academical dress would be obsolete. Indeed, whilst there is no good reason to assume that Loos’ hypothesis does apply to costume, academical dress enthusiasts have observed—with a mixture of sadness and consternation—the decline of academical costume during the last several decades. There can be little doubt that academical dress is now absent from such settings as grammar schools and university lecture theatres, where it was once regarded as the norm. For many, academical costume is regarded simply as an historical curiosity, the somewhat bizarre attire that garnishes the graduation day with the quintessential trappings of medieval English ceremonial. Despite this, special interest groups have emerged with the intention of promoting the wearing of academical costume over and above its use in graduation ceremonial, both on a national2 and local3 basis. These groups, whilst not necessarily promoting the rigorous scholarly engagement with the history, design and practice of academical dress that characterizes the mission of the Burgon Society, nevertheless attest to a perceived need actively to encourage the preservation of academical costume. Tracing the decline of academical costume The macroscopic decline in academical dress can be demonstrated by a microscopic case study of the dismantling of the practice at the University of 99 Cambridge—an institution with a well-developed and (reasonably) systematic scheme of academical dress,4 as well as a strong and living tradition of its use,5 and one which has kept an official record of the decline, deposited in minutes of council discussions and amendments to the Statutes and Ordinances. Academical dress has long been regulated by statute at Cambridge: the earliest recorded statutes (of Peterhouse) require Fellows to ‘appear in the University dressed in the proper robes’,6 and more extensive regulations were developed in both the Elizabethan code of 1570 and by Lord Burghley in 1587,7 further being influenced by sumptuary legislation.8 Academical dress at Cambridge is regulated by both College and University Statute, colleges requiring their members to wear academical dress for such events as formal hall and chapel (often requiring it more frequently than University Statute), and thus an exhaustive study of these statutes is beyond the scope of this paper. The primary University legislative texts, the Statutes and Ordinances, nevertheless provide an important insight into the developments in design and practice of academical dress at Cambridge and a direct comparison of the pre-1923 statute9 and present legislation underlines considerable evidence of deregulation. Academical dress is to be worn by members of the University in statu pupillari:10 4 For all its unfortunate facets (the treatment of PhDs, inter alia) Cambridge’s extensive and systematic scheme of academical dress is easily contrasted with the scheme of the University of Oxford, which unlike Cambridge has not adopted a system of faculty colours: the lining of doctoral hoods seeming disjointed from those of bachelors and masters. 5 Again, the living nature of Cambridge’s tradition is underscored by comparison with Oxford’s, which has not been essentially reformed since 1770. Cambridge’s tradition, by contrast, is somewhat less ossified, being influenced (perhaps subconsciously) by London’s faculty colours reform, adopting a doctoral faculty colour system in 1889 and later acquiring a full system of faculty colours, albeit as late as 1934. (See B. Christianson, ‘Lined with Gold’, Transactions of the Burgon Society, 5 (2005), pp. 80–89.) 6 H. P. Stokes, Ceremonies of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927), p. 43. 7 Ibid., p. 44. 8 Although no sumptuary legislation applied directly to academical dress, its influence on doctoral robes is alluded to by C. A. H. Franklyn (Academical Dress (Lewes: Baxter, 1970), p. 112), and provisions and implications of sumptuary legislation for undergraduates and graduates are explored in detail by N. Cox, ‘Tudor Sumptuary Laws and Academical Dress’, Transactions of the Burgon Society, 6 (2006), pp. 15–43. 9 In 1923, following His Majesty’s granting Royal Assent to the Universities (...truncated)


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Oliver James Keenan. How Can Academical Dress Survive in the Third Millennium?, Transactions of the Burgon Society, 2010, Volume 10, Issue 1,