If you delve into any reasonably well-equipped gentleman’s wardrobe, you’ll probably find a few eponyms lurking around inside like joyous linguistic jewels of historical delight. Eponyms? Isn’t that just a fancy name for those little studs that fasten your manly chest mounds into starched cotton when you pop on a dinner shirt? No, my friend. An eponym refers to a person, real or imaginary, after whom something has been named, as well as to the name itself. And the world of style has some great ones knocking around.

There’s the Stetson, named after Johnny B. Stetson, acclaimed milliner. Confusingly, he also gave rise to the eponym within an eponym that is the Stetson Fedora, named after the heroine in the eponymous play by Sardou (nice). Amelia Bloomer championed the eponymous breezy undergarment whilst the French aerialist, Jules Leotard, creator of the flying trapeze, popularized the Milli-Vanilli look, many years before their ill-fated and essentially pornographic appearance on Top of the Pops.

Long before middle-youth sportswear fiends were trawling the internet for the latest rare Japanese kicks to make them feel like their twenties weren’t entirely wasted, Adi Dassler was busy thinking about putting three little stripes on the side of his plimmies. In fact, the Wellington, Gladstone and Macintosh all tip a wink to their inventors and advocates long after the only sartorial decision they need to be involved in is ‘pine or oak?’.

Of course, it’s not just limited to the ‘nom de l’homme’. When James Potter, a rich New York socialite wore a tremendous Henry Poole creation to the Tuxedo Park Club in 1886, a host of copycats were born. And who could forget Ambrose Burnside’s contribution to face-fashion in the 1840’s (think about it)?

The eponym is a great case in point for the academic approach to threads. When it comes to the style curriculum, it’s worth mixing a session of fashion with a double period of history and an evening class in etymology. If you know where your garment’s from, you’ll know where it’s at. And that’s a fact.