Anthony Eden Hat - The Hat As A Trademark

The Hat As A Trademark

Even so, the image stuck. The hat became a "trademark" in the public mind, assisting instant recognition, and was one of the most recognisable features of contemporaneous political cartoons. During the general election campaign in 1955, when Eden was Prime Minister, he was presented with "an Eden hat" when he and Lady Eden (he became a Knight of the Garter in 1954) visited the Lancashire hat-making town of Atherton. At various points of the Suez Crisis the following year, cartoons depicted him in the same hat for which he had become known twenty years earlier. In one by Vicky for the New Statesman, a behatted but otherwise barely clothed Eden was shown in the biblical Garden of Eden being tempted with an apple by a young Frenchwoman, presumably Marianne, in the guise of Eve. (The allusion was to French pressure for joint action to reverse the unilateral nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Egyptian President Nasser.)