Textiles and Dress

Anthony Eden hat

An "Anthony Eden" hat, or simply an "Anthony Eden", was a type of headgear popularised in Britain in the mid-20th century by politician Anthony Eden. Eden, who was known for his sartorial elegance, favoured a silk-brimmed, black felt homburg at a time when most Britons preferred the trilby or the bowler. Eden held a number of cabinet posts in the 1930s and the 1940s, and was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957. The hat became so associated with him that it was commonly known in the UK as the "Anthony Eden" (or, in London's Savile Row, simply as the "Eden"). It was not marketed as such and the name was purely informal, but the use of the term was widespread, entering dictionaries and phrase books: for example, it was still listed in the 17th edition of Brewer in 2005 and as recently as 2010 the fashion "guru" Trinny Woodall cited the hat as an example of Eden's reputation for being well dressed. It came into particular vogue among civil servants and diplomats in Whitehall and, to that extent, rather belied the stereotypical view, that lasted until well after the Second World War, of civil servants as a "bowler hat" brigade.

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See also

• ▸Elephant pants
• ▸Breeches
• ▸Ball gown

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.