Here’s a pretty special edition of The Antiques Clothes Show. Alex (a lad who works at our Manchester stronghold) recently unearthed his dad’s old flares.
Here’s the story behind them (and some unreal photos)...
I’m guessing I probably got these jeans in 1972 or 1973. They probably cost about two quid in today’s money. I chose these ones because of the flare size, so they’d cover my platforms that I used to wear.
I got them from a place called Stolen from Ivor in the Underground Market, that was the best place in town to get clothes at that time. That was where you could get all the trendy clothes for teenagers, like star sweaters, penny round collar shirts, two tone trousers, platforms, Brutus shirts, Ben Shermans… everything like that.
I’d often wear these with a Brutus shirt. It probably looked a bit out of place wearing big flares with more of a skinhead’s kind of shirt, but that’s what we did.
The band patches certainly weren’t sewed on by me. I tried doing one of them, you can probably tell which one it is, but my mum had to do the rest.
Nine times out of ten, the bands played at the Free Trade Hall, which was the best place in town by a country mile. Failing that, they’d play at the Apollo or the Palace. I think the best band I saw around that time was Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1977, three months before most of them died in a plane crash. After that, I’d say Alex Harvey, Doctor Feelgood and Rainbow.
It was absolutely fantastic watching bands back then. Watching bands now isn’t the same. The atmosphere then was absolutely brilliant, and you were spoilt for choice. I remember going to seven top concerts in the space of 30 days.
I think I last wore the jeans at a fancy dress party five or six years ago, with a false wig as I don’t have my own hair anymore. I can’t throw them away.
