Eve was a small Central London night club which opened in 1953 and was well-known for its imaginative floor-shows. Its founder, Helen O'Brien, devised witty entertainments which contained all the elements traditionally associated with glamorous night clubs - music, dance and parades of attractive showgirls - but presented them in a highly original way. Her designer, Ronald Cobb, created the costumes for sequences with such unexpected themes as Shakespeare's plays, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and The Mind of Goya. The club appealed to a sophisticated audience that enjoyed spotting the references.

In the 1970s the majority of the Eve showgirls were topless. Their costumes were minimal but elaborate, no more than a headdress, sleeves and a G-string, but all incorporated amusing references and symbols appropriate to the theme. This headdress was worn in a sequence with the title 'Bibliotheque' in which the girls personified different literary genres, including Science Fiction, the Crime Novel and Drama, with Shakespeare representing the theatre. Ronald Cobb designed costumes to illustrate Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hamlet. Only the Hamlet headdress survives. Cobb's design shows that the sleeves were in two different medieval styles and the comically tasteless decoration on the G-string was the white face of the drowned Ophelia. The headdress is heavy and requires the wearer to have perfect deportment.