JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Kat Milyko will wear a gown that has been in her family for 94 years when she graduates from Hollins University on Sunday. She plans to study library science in graduate school at the University of Denver.

JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

The gown has been worn by 16 family members before Kat Milyko. The first was her great-grandmother, Lillian Milyko, in 1915.

The story of the Milyko family gown began with Lillian, a fruitful matriarch from New York, who wore the black garment on her college graduation day. She was the first in her family to go to college, and after the ceremony she sewed her name to the collar: Lillian Milyko, 1915.

The First World War ended; the Second World War began. And the Milyko descendants began wearing the gown to their own graduations, each adding a name and year to the lining.

Four generations later, it has become a family tree in fabric. At last count there were 15 names stitched to the 94-year-old heirloom, along with a few patches here and there. Earlier this month, a cousin in Indiana became No. 16.

And No. 17 will be Kat Milyko, who will put on great-grandmother Lillian's gown when she collects a diploma from Hollins University on Sunday morning -- the fourth woman in the Milyko line to graduate from the Roanoke County institution wearing the family robe.

She is one of 239 students who will graduate from Hollins at 10 a.m. on the front quadrangle of the campus.

"I wouldn't want to put that in the washing machine," Milyko, 22, said this week after unfurling the gown at the school's Wyndham Robertson Library. (Coincidentally, Wyndham Robertson is also the commencement speaker Sunday.)

The spin cycle aside, the gown looked sturdy enough for another graduation. It held none of the offending odors -- neither mothball nor mildew -- that might cling to something that has been in the closet since Woodrow Wilson was president. And gown fashion does not seem to have changed much in the years since.

But the material in the thing was anyone's guess. Silk, wool and even polyester were suggested by those who had puzzled over the old cloth. The tag makes no mention.

Milyko, a double-major in English and creative writing, went over a collection of aunts and great-aunts and cousins who have added their name to the regalia. One of them, her Aunt Sandy Kirkpatrick, had first suggested that she wear the family robe. ("A family robe?" Milyko recalled thinking.)

"There have been people of all sizes and widths to wear this," said Kirkpatrick, who is also a Hollins grad.

Though Lillian Milyko was a petite woman of perhaps 5 feet tall, at least one male relative a foot taller donned the robe.

"I have no doubt it will make it to 100 years," Kirkpatrick said, though she added that the companion cap had not fared as well and had been discarded.

The gown was made by the company Cotrell & Leonard of Albany, N.Y., a one-time dry goods store that began sewing academic apparel about 1880. Academic gowns were rising in popularity around the country at the time, a style adopted from the United Kingdom.

"We do hear about these things occasionally," said John Harden, the current general manager of Cotrell & Leonard, when informed that a vintage gown would be attending a commencement this weekend.

Before wrapping up a phone call -- this week was the busiest of the year for gown makers -- Harden noted that his company's regalia had held up admirably.

And it has another two years to go at Hollins.

Kat Milyko's sister, Amy, plans to be No. 18. She expects to graduate in 2011.