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, later 1st Earl of Avon (1897–1977). 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"[1]: 376 ). 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.[2] 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.[3]
- ^ Graves, Robert (2006) [1940]. Hodge, Alan (ed.). The Long Weekend: A Social History of Great Britain 1918–1939. Carcanet. ISBN 978-1-85754-664-4.
- ^ This Week, BBC 1 TV, 23 September 2010
- ^ In the 1980s, an episode of the BBC television series Yes Minister showed a long line of bowler hatted civil servants lining up to board an aircraft for a diplomatic mission to the Middle East, long after such hats (or any hats) would have been worn in reality ("The Moral Dimension", 1982).