(Paul Fitzpatrick)

I always knew what football kit, football boots and training kit I wanted. No surprise then that my first flirtation with fashion was football related.

Circa 1970 I remember seeing a picture of the Liverpool footballer Steve Heighway in a football magazine sporting what I thought was a nifty ensemble consisting of a Simon type casual top and a pair of blue cords. I cut the page out and asked my parents if they could get me something similar. They took this on board, quite pleased for once that I was taking an interest in my attire but came back with something very different. A bright orange shirt resplendent with matching tie and a pair of purple crimplene trousers.

I learnt a valuable lesson at an early age, do your own shopping!

1970 was a seminal year, a transition from primary to secondary school, the start of going to youth clubs and school discos and gatherings with girls in attendance.
How you looked, started to matter.

In 1970 everything was BIG. The collars on shirts, the lapels on jackets, the width of trouser hems and especially tie widths, the amount of fabric used in that period must have been colossal.

Also, the colours were mental; the gaudier the better, bright oranges, vibrant purples, lavish lilacs, shitty browns, nothing was off limits.

Great looks if you’re a pimp working your ‘ladies’ on Times Square but not so cool for a 12-year-old on the leafy suburbs of Glasgow.

I had a big mop of curly hair when I was younger, in later years everyone thought it was a perm which was annoying, particularly c.1978 when everyone did have a perm so I’m wondering if my parents had been watching too many Blaxploitation films when they were choosing my clothes. 

Mixing with older kids at school and playing football against teams from other parts of Glasgow gave me a wider perspective on what was cool and fashionable.
Some trends were national (you could always tell by watching TOTP), but some were very Glasgow centric.

First came the skinhead look which consisted of Doc Martens (or Monkey Boots), Oxford shirts or Fred Perry polos. Wrangler jeans, braces and a denim or a Harrington Jacket. We cut our hair short, but not that short and we never got into Ska or Reggae, or any trouble come to think of it. We were the politest, softest skinheads you could meet, a complete discredit to the culture.

Skinhead & Suedehead fashions were nation-wide but with regional twists, for instance Wrangler jeans were always more popular than Levis or Lee in Glasgow.

There were a couple of other really interesting Glasgow trends that followed, based on tailoring and the made-to-measure culture.

I remember seeing my first Arthur Black shirt and being mesmerised, I hadn’t seen anything like it. It was the coolest thing I had laid eyes on; it also had the bloke’s initials embroidered on it, genius!

Arthur Black Shirts and Slacks was a tailoring establishment in Glasgow’s St Enoch Square where handmade clothes were produced to your own specification. The big trend at the time was western yoke shirts and at Arthur’s you could choose your own colour combinations as well as how many buttons, pleats, zips, epaulettes and pockets you wanted, plus you could personalise further with embroidered names or initials.

As you can imagine there were some weird and wonderful designs and it also reflected the wearers personality from plain and sensible to wacky and weird. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of images in circulation but there’s a couple below to give you an idea, although they’re from the wacky category.

Following on from this, a wonderful shop called Argyle House in Buchanan St, offered a similar service specialising in knitwear. My pride and joy back then was a wool turquoise full zip cardigan with a Royal Stewart tartan yoke and my initials (PF) embroidered on it, I wore it to school one day and a teacher pulled me up and said there were two O’s missing – quite funny for a teacher…

Of course, these artisan classics didn’t come cheap, and Mums & Nans from Clydebank to Rutherglen were busy trying to work out how to knit their own versions with varying degrees of success.

The shirts and jumpers would later be copied for mass production and sold in boutiques like Krazy House and City Cash Tailors in Glasgow and worn by the likes of Bay City Rollers, which of course was the sign for us to move on.

In 1974 we started going up the town to discos, with Clouds and Shuffles being the main ones for our age group back then.

At this point the influence of our pop idols had started to kick in and we were wearing platform shoes, patchwork jeans or high waist ‘oxford bag’ trousers, with Simon shirts and satin bomber jackets. There were always local ‘influencers’ and early adopters, guys who like my pal Hughie Kinnaird who always had the right look before everyone else back then.

Interestingly the bomber jackets and trousers we wore were often purchased in girls’ boutiques like Chelsea Girl or Miss Selfridge as they weren’t available yet in any of the male boutiques.

There’s a pic below of me in Blackpool, September weekend 1974 wearing part of this ensemble. I’ve no idea why I’m wearing a hat with the hat ribbon worn as a scarf/tie, but I can only think that the years of being dressed as a pimp by my parents had a lasting and damaging effect.