Joseph Stalin’s new marshal’s uniform was the sartorial sensation of last year’s Teheran conference. At Yalta it was Winston Churchill’s black fur hat latest in a line of notable headgear. Pictures of the Prime Minister’s peculiar toppiece put London in a dither. Where had he got it? Certainly not from Bond Street.
Said the Daily Mail: a “cossack” creation.
Said Reuters: a Canadian creation that excited “great interest among the Russians.”
Said the Canadian press: a caracul shapka of the style worn by Muscovite storekeepers.
Said a Daily Mail cartoonist, picturing two Britons staring at Churchill and the hat: “I wouldn’t mind betting he got it by mistake from a cloakroom attendant.”
Said the News Chronicle: a sealskin wedge hat presented to the Prime Minister by Ottawa correspondents in 1941.
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