From 1923 to 1925, the SA did not officially exist since Hitler had been imprisoned for his actions in the Munich Putsch and the Nazi Party banned in Germany. Underground cells of SA men did continue to meet in secret, including one run by an SA leader named
Gerhard Roßbach. It was Roßbach who effectively invented the "Nazi brownshirt" uniform since, during Roßbach's Austrian exile in 1924, a large store of military surplus brown denim shirts intended for tropical uniforms in East Africa, which were originally bought in 1921, was taken over by the Schill Youth in Germany. The "
Schill Sportversand" then became the main supplier for the SA brown shirts. In 1925, the SA was re-founded as part of the new Nazi Party which Hitler had put together following his release from prison. The reborn SA then received its first formal uniform regulations and also began using the first recognisable system of rank insignia. Along with a brown shirt uniform, SA members would wear swastika armbands with a
kepi cap. Originally, the SA used its pre-1923 rank titles, but this changed in 1926 when local SA units began to be grouped into larger
regiment sized formations known as
Standarten. Each SA regiment was commanded by a senior SA officer called a
Standartenführer. At the same time, to differentiate from the SA rank and file, senior SA officers began to wear oak leaves on their collars to signify their authority. Under this system, a
Standartenführer wore one oak leaf, an
Oberführer two oak leaves, and the Supreme SA Commander wore three. The lower ranks of
SA-Führer and
SA-Mann still wore no insignia. In 1927, the officer rank of
SA-Führer became known by the title of
Sturmführer and a higher officer rank known as
Sturmbannführer was created to be held by battalion formation commanders directly subordinate to the
Standartenführer. In 1928, an expansion of SA enlisted ranks was required in response to the growing rank and file membership of the SA troopers. These new titles and ranks were denoted by an insignia system which consisted of silver pips pinned to a wearer's collar. The pip system was adopted from the
Stahlhelm veteran's group which was closely connected to the SA both in dual membership and ideological design. A further change in 1928 was the creation of the rank of
Gruppenführer. This rank used the three leaf collar insignia previously reserved for the Supreme SA Commander and the rank was held by the senior most SA commanders in Germany who led division sized formations of several SA-
Standarten. By this time, the SA had also begun to use unit insignia for its junior members which consisted of a numbered collar patch, showing both battalion and regiment affiliation, worn opposite the badge of rank. This unit insignia patch was worn by those holding the rank of
Sturmbannführer and below; the higher officer ranks wore oak leaf insignia on both collars. By the end of the 1920s, the SA rank system had solidified into the following titles: ==SA uniforms under Ernst Röhm (1930–1933)==