Anthony Eden hat

An "Anthony Eden" hat, or simply an "Anthony Eden", was a silk-brimmed, black felt Homburg of the kind favoured in the 1930s by Anthony Eden, later 1st Earl of Avon (1897–1977). Eden was a Cabinet Minister in the British National Government, holding the offices of Lord Privy Seal from 1934–1935 and Foreign Secretary 1935 to 1938. He was later Dominions Secretary from 1939–1940, War Secretary in 1940, Foreign Secretary from 1940–1945 and 1951–1955, and Prime Minister 1955 to 1957.

The "Anthony Eden" (rarely the "Eden", except in London's Savile Row) 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.

The Homburg had initially been popularised in Britain by King Edward VII who often visited Bad Homburg in Germany. It was essentially a more rigid variant of the trilby which had been fashionable since George du Maurier's novel of that name was published in 1894. The writer and broadcaster Rene Cutforth recalled in the 1970s that

one of things that strikes me most about the Thirties scene when I think about it now is the trilby hat, the universal headgear of the middle classes ... [s]ometime early in the century, it must have been a wild gesture of freedom and informality ... By the thirties it had certainly become degenerate ... It was a hat which had lost all aspiration: it had become a mingy hat ...".

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