A Decorated Sleeve
Chief Justice Rehnquist also made his robes unique by adding four gold stripes to the sleeves as an homage to a character in Iolanthe, one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas.
Though his stripes were based on the costume at a specific local production that he attended, you can get a sense of his inspiration from this image of a production of the show by the Gilbert and Sullivan Players at Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges.
The Iolanthe costumes would themselves have been based on ornate official robes like those seen in this portrait of Sir Robert Romer and in many of the other portraits in ourLegal Portrait Collection.