70'S BRUTUS WAISTCOAT

Most youth fashion in the 70's seemed to be based around denim. Everyone appeared to be clad in it.

As well as jeans, there were denim shirts, short denim jackets, denim dress jackets, long denim coats, denim skirts, denim hats, denim boots, denim belts, denim bags, and I even had a denim guitar strap!

A typical example of a 70's denim fashion item is my waistcoat above, from around the 1974/75 period.

However, around 1972/73, the 2 main denim heavyweights, Levi & Wrangler, had a new kid arrive on the block to challenge their dominance - and this was Brutus.

The thing about Brutus was that they were British, not American, and they made a point of including the Union Jack into their tag design. You can see it in the photo.

So UK youth gave Brutus the thumbs up and they became just as popular in the 70's as the other 2.

Blimey, just thinking back now, I can still recall the waft of denim being the first thing that hit you when you went into shops like Wildcat and Supertramp in the Overgate!