Parallel Trousers and Bags

Clothes were never very important to me, but there was a time when I very much wanted to get specific styles in clothes. I was at school and must have been thirteen or so. Suddenly certain clothes were very attractive; I think it was all about being part of a gang. It started with parallel trousers and platform shoes. I don't know all the cultural history of these trousers, but a few of my mates wore them and they seemed the biz. This was around the time Slade were wearing their outlandish garb of high heeled boots and trousers that came just above their ankles. The best of the trousers were made of a shot cotton material that looked different colours in different lights. There's a good page here about 70s clothes, this guy seems to know his stuff - I remember Scratch 'n' Sniff t-shirts! We also liked shirts with round collars; nice deep colours they were. I think the shirts were called Brutus; they looked very good. I think a bit before that Ben Shermans were supposed to be very cool (worn a lot by skinheads; did mods wear them as well?) Later the trousers got wider and were called Bags or Oxford Bags and the shoes got fatter with less of a heel. That was round about when the Bay City Rollers took the nation's female youth by storm - 1974 apparently, though that seems very close now to the start of Punk; well I guess things were moving faster then. Anyway, the Rollers wore their bags high with tartan trim. I remember we asked each other a lot how wide each others bags were (! Idiots). Anyway I don't remember it lasting long, so that was my brief flirtation with fashion then.