It has become common knowledge that the Bay City Rollers tartan trimmed outfits were unique to the band, like, they came up with the idea ... but that is not so.
I can't speak for all of UK but up in Scotland, teenage tartan-based street fashion had been around since at least 1972, two years before the Bay City Rollers appeared on Top Of The Pops wearing it.
In 1972, shops were already selling tartan trim shirts, for example, "Target two-tone tartan shirts" - Target being the brand name.
These shirts were also referred to as Western shirts and Ranch shirts but they all had the same shoulder and pocket tartan trim design in common.
There were plenty of youngsters wearing them in 1972 - talking early to mid teens here, secondary school age group, and there were lots of pupils at my school who wore this gear back then.
As well as Target shirts, streetwise teenagers also had a DIY thing going where they would customise clothes by adding tartan trim to jeans & denim jackets, for example, tartan turn-ups, pockets, cuffs, and collars.
So when the Bay City Rollers showed up on Top Of The Pops wearing this gear in 1974, it was exactly the same as what youngsters had been wearing in Scotland for the past couple of years.
That's what made them appealing to young teenagers - they related to the Rollers because it was down to earth street fashion which was available to buy locally, not like the flashy stage outfits glam rockers wore up to that point.
This look, along with high-waist jerseys and half mast trousers was a popular teen fad.
For instance, guys wore their trousers half mast to show off their Doc Marten boots and gals wore theirs half mast to display their hooped socks.
Even Noddy Holder was wearing his trousers half mast in 72 to show off his hooped socks.
BCR wore theirs half-mast for the same reason, to show off their platform boots, baseball boots and hooped socks.
Also, wearing a scarf tied around your wrist and having a scarf dangling from the waist of your trousers was commonplace in 1972, so the Rollers wearing their scarves like that on TOTP was nothing new.
It wasn't until the Rollers achieved worldwide fame in 1975 that the band started to have their own special versions of this look custom made.
They even went as far as having their own official BCR tartan.
But it definitely wasn't Bay City Rollers who invented this fashion trend first - they just adopted the look that was already popular, then adapted it later when fame kicked in.
Top image is an illustration of the Target tartan shirts that were available in 1972.
Next is an image of girls wearing half mast trousers to display their hooped socks which is dated 1972 as well.
Below that is a photo of Bay City Rollers dated 1972 - this is what the band looked like then, not a tartan garment or hooped sock in sight.
Under it is snippets from Scottish shop advertisements, with the ones dating from 1972 having tartan trim shirts on sale, and then later in 1975 these shirts were now being referred to as Bay City Rollers shirts.
Beneath that is a photo of the band in 1975, and now, all five are clad in tartan.
It wasn't until 1975 when most streetwise guys saw how popular the tartan trim look had become with very young teenybopper girls, that most abandoned the gear and let the BCR gals continue with it themselves.
Click on images to enlarge.
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