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.

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 ...

In 1936 the American magazine Time referred to his "pin-stripe trousers, modish short jacket and swank black felt hat", worn during a diplomatic mission to the League of Nations in Geneva.

[10] In addition to the homburg, Eden was associated with the mid-1930s fashion for wearing a white linen waistcoat with a lounge suit,[1]: 376  while the poet and novelist Robert Graves likened Eden's moustache to those of film stars Ronald Colman, William Powell and Clark Gable: "the new moustache was small, short and carefully cut, sometimes slightly curved over the lip at either end, sometimes making a thin straight line".

[1]: 376  When Eden visited New York City in 1938 he was "deluged with fan mail from teenage college girls to elderly matrons", while women reporters and society editors "gushed about his classic features, his long dark eyelashes, his limpid eyes, his clear skin, his wavy hair, his charm and magnetism".

[1] The journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who was not an admirer of Eden, recalled that, among other qualities, "an elegant appearance and an earnest disposition ... equipped him for dazzling advancement ... An astrakhan collar became him.

[13] However, in August of that year, the British Minister in Prague, Basil Newton, wore "a black homburg of the kind made fashionable by Anthony Eden" to greet Lord Runciman on his arrival by train at Wilson station for talks with the Czechoslovak government.

[14] In 1939, writing to a former classmate during a European tour, the future United States President John F. Kennedy remarked that he had not been doing much work, "but have been sporting around in my morning coat, my 'Anthony Eden' black homburg and white gardenia".

[16]: 461–462  In the period between his resignation and his return to the government on the outbreak of war in 1939, Eden and his acolytes, who, broadly speaking, favoured a tougher stance against Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, were often referred to as "the glamour boys".

King Farouk (overthrown in 1952) and the ancient Queen Cleopatra, as the embodiment of the Egyptian state, were shown to have torn up the treaty of 1936 which provided for Britain's military presence in the Suez Canal zone.

[16]) Journalist and social historian Anne de Courcy has written of Chamberlain that "he did not smoke a pipe, nor, as Anthony Eden did, always wear the same distinctive hat, though cartoonists made the most of his ever-present umbrella".

[38] (On Guy Fawkes Night 1938 the future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, then a rebellious Conservative MP, burned an image of Chamberlain with rolled umbrella, which he topped with his own homburg.

In 2006, the son of a Wolverhampton ironmonger recalled a very wet evening on which Enoch Powell, the local Member of Parliament throughout the 1950s and 60s, required a new washer for a tap: "his moustache quivered with urgency and water streamed from the broad rim of his black Homburg hat.

[48] In 1969 the Kinks recorded for their album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) a song called "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina".