Trilby

A trilby or trilby hat is a soft felt men's hat with a narrow brim and a deeply indented crown. It is traditionally made from rabbit fur felt, but may also be made of other materials such as tweed.

Related Topics:
Felt - Hat - Rabbit - Tweed

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Trilby hats are softer than Homburgs, and have a flexible rather than curved brim. They are also similar to fedoras, but with a narrower brim. The term Trilby is sometimes broadly used to refer to any similar hat, such as the pork pie hat.

Related Topics:
Homburg - Fedora - Pork pie hat

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Its name derives from the play based on George du Maurier's 1884 novel Trilby. A hat of this style was worn on stage during its first London production. The novel's Trilby is described as having exceptionally pretty feet, which would cause a narrow indentation of the kind seen in trilby hats; some sources attribute the hat's name to this fact.

Related Topics:
George du Maurier - 1884 - Trilby - London

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The central character in Ben Croshaw's adventure game 5 Days a Stranger, a notorious cat burglar, is given the moniker "Trilby" by newspapers, presumably because of the hat he wears.

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Trilby was also the informal name given to William Norman Ewer, a foreign correspondent for a socialist London newspaper in the late 19th and first half of the 20th Century. He was bitterly opposed to the Great War, registered as a Conscientious Objector and in 1917 wrote the anti-war poem "Five Souls", the refrain of which; "I gave my life for freedom-- This I know: For those who bade me fight had told me so" now adorns (somewhat ironically), many Vietnam War memorials in the US.

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There is no doubt that Trilby was a communist and, as some would have it, the original Soviet Master Spy in the traditional Cambridge mold. He fell out with the Communist Party during the 1930s, and when news of Stalin's atrocities emerged after WWII, furiously renounced any association with the Soviet Union.

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He gained some notoriety and accusations of anti-semitism for a piece of doggerel;

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How odd

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of God

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to Chose

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the Jews

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Yet there is nothing in his writings to suggest that Trilby was an anti-Semite. The verse was most likely one of many flippantly scribbled while propping up a Fleet Street bar.

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