CHRIS KOENIG looks back at the origins of the complex array of Oxford University's academic gowns

Poor degrees from Oxford have marked the start of many a remarkable career. I might mention Evelyn Waugh, who went off to the pub at Beckley to drown his sorrows on hearing of his third-class degree, or even John Ruskin, who at least obtained a double-third.

Perhaps all such people, obvious possessors of huge intelligence, vow between gritted teeth that they'll show 'em. Certainly the future Lord Curzon (1859-1925) did something of the sort.

On learning of his third, he said: "Now I shall devote the rest of my life to showing the examiners that they have made a mistake." Then he went on to become Viceroy of India, among other things.

One reason for his poor degree may well have been that, as an undergraduate at Balliol, he was far too busy with politics to do much in the way of academic work. In any case, his busy-body aloofness, which within weeks saw him making speeches at the Oxford Union (of which he later became president), won him few friends.

It must have been sweet indeed for him to don the splendid robes of Chancellor of Oxford University in 1907, complete with a gold tassel on his mortarboard, and walk into the Sheldonian Theatre to be enthroned.

Those robes were (and are) at the pinnacle of a complicated array of academic gowns that dates back to the 13th century.

In 1222, for instance, the Archbishop of Canterbury decreed that all Oxford students and academics (he called them clerks) should go round in gowns - described as cappa clausa, loose hooded capes with a hole for the head and a slit in front for the arms.

Academics remained hoodies even after the hood went out of fashion elsewhere in 15th-century England. And just as Oxford University itself came into being when some English students at the University of Paris fled here, the mortarboard seems also to have also arrived here from the French capital where it was introduced to the university about 1520.

Mortarboards were decorated with a sort of bump at their centre to which, in the 18th century, was added a tuft or tassel.

In 1770 it became official university policy for anyone judged to be of noble birth to wear a gold tuft, or toff, which in turn gave rise to the present slang word for an aristocrat. The snobbish dress-code, only abandoned in the late 19th century, gave rise, too, to tuft-hunting, the habit of less exalted people seeking out the company of gold-tassell wearers.

Over the centuries, founders of colleges and faculties laid down instructions for what amounted to uniforms, in addition to different gowns for holders of different degrees, until by 1636 confusion reigned. An ineffectual attempt was then made to fill a chest with an example of each robe then in use, all clearly labelled.

Not until 1956 was the confusion cleared up. Then D.R. Venables, of the clothes shop Shepherd and Woodward, drew up a pattern book of robes and gowns that was finally approved by the university.

As for Lord Curzon, he reckoned one jibe, penned in Oxford, did him more harm than any subsequently coined. It ran: My name is George Nathaniel Curzon, I am a most superior purzon. . . My face is pink, my hair is sleek, I dine at Blenheim once a week.

When in Oxford he lived at St Giles House, 16 St Giles, now part of St John's College. It was built in 1702 and was described by Pevsner as "the best house of its date in Oxford".