Brands of the century: Echo
An accessories company with enduring reverberations.
This is the second post in a series on U.S. brands originally created at least a century ago. Here’s the first post, on Shinola. Subscribe to get updates, and click on the headline to see all the images and text in your browser or app.
If I were to quiz you about brand-name recognition, chances are most of you would associate “Echo” with the line of Amazon “smart” speakers introduced in 2014. But there’s a much older Echo brand that has thrived in a wholly different category: scarves.
I’d long been aware of Echo scarves, and of their most famous ad campaign — keep reading for more about that — but I hadn’t thought much about any of it, or even realized that the brand was still alive, until a few months ago, when I discovered a beautiful Echo scarf in a local thrift shop: a 100 percent silk 35-inch square with rolled hems and a richly detailed print of an antique map of the world. It went home with me, and it inspired some investigation.
Here’s the scarf that launched my research:
The history
Echo Scarfs was founded in New York City by Edgar C. Hyman and Theresa Hyman on their wedding day, September 27, 1923. As a 2018 press release put it: “They went to City Hall to get their marriage license and decided to incorporate their business while they were there.” “Echo” was formed from Edgar’s initials and the “o” from “company.” It was Echo Scarfs from the beginning; the noun is usually pluralized as scarves, but scarfs is also acceptable, and a little more noticeable.
The company survived the Great Depression and evolved over the decades, eventually changing its name to Echo Design Group to reflect its expanded offerings: gloves, hats, ponchos, bags, and home decor as well as scarves. (The company website is EchoNewYork.com.) It remains privately held to this day, run by a third generation of Hyman descendants. Edgar and Theresa’s daughter, Dorothy Hyman Roberts, known as Dot1 , worked at the company for almost 70 years; at the time of her death in July 2020, her title was Chairman.
From Roberts’s obituary:
Over her tenure, she led the business to new heights. With Dot at the helm, Echo signed a license with Ralph Lauren, which it has held since 1983. The company has partnerships with a variety of private label accounts including Coach, Talbots, J Jill, Brooks Brothers, MoMA, and the Smithsonian, almost all of which Dot was instrumental in building, in addition to selling branded products to most major department stores and over 1200 specialty stores.
The goods
Scarf cognoscenti will insist that nothing rivals scarves by the French house of Hermès, each of which can take 750 hours to create — from harvesting the silk to spinning the yarn and printing and finishing each piece — and each of which retails for at least $600. But for those of us of more modest means, Echo scarves provide some of the same aesthetic thrill for about a third of the price. Echo’s fabrics are lustrous, the colors are saturated, the prints — like those of Hermès — are intricate and often whimsical.
For Echo’s centennial in 2023 the company collaborated with artists, illustrators, and designers from around the world to produce 100 original designs, each in a numbered edition of 100, each priced at $195. $100 of the purchase price is donated to a nonprofit organization chosen by the scarf’s designer.
Beginning in the 1930s, Echo pioneered the practice of printing a logo on every scarf. During World War II, the company specialized in patriotic scarves, often made from rayon. (Silk was needed for parachutes.)
If you can find an Echo scarf from the 1950s, it may have been made in Italy. In the 1970s and 1980s Echo manufactured in Japanese silk factories. Today the scarves’ origin is given merely as “imported,” which probably means China, where silk weaving originated some 5,000 years ago.
The tagline
In the 1970s Echo turned to advertising executive Peter Rogers for a new campaign and tagline. Rogers was responsible for the campaign’s overall strategy, but it was copywriter Jane Trahey — who had created the “What Becomes a Legend Most?” tagline for the fur company Blackglama2 — who came up with the simple, powerful themeline: “The Echo of an interesting woman.”
Note the choice of adjective. It could have been “beautiful” or “alluring.” But no: What matters most is that she’s interesting — something every woman, no matter her age or appearance, can aspire to. (The tagline is also an exception to the general rule that says “Don’t repeat your brand name in your slogan or use it as a generic word.” It works brilliantly here.)
The message was so memorable and timeless that Echo revived the tagline for its 95th-anniversary celebrations, in which 89-year-old Dot Roberts happily took part.
Echo, echo, echo
Yes, there are many other Echo brands out there, including a Cirque du Soleil production, several newspapers, and numerous film titles — not to mention Ecco (shoes), Ekco (kitchenware), Ecko (streetwear), and Eco (lots of things). Wikipedia has a long Echo disambiguation page, but to my surprise no page at all for the 103-year-old Echo Scarf company. I’ll add it to my to-do list.
Previously in Brands of the Century:
Like the zebra in the logo!
Trahey also coined the brand name Blackglama, a witty expansion of the acronym for the Great Lakes Mink Association (GLMA). And she wrote “It’s Not Fake Anything, It’s Real Dynel.” And lots more: See this compilation by Dave Dye, which includes ads for shoe retailer I. Miller. And who created those delightful I. Miller illustrations? None other than a pre-famous Andy Warhol.
I was lucky enough to work for Echo for 10 years. Dot was a mentor to me and embodied what it is and was to be a kind, fair, forward thinking leader. I will always treasure my time there and my collection of wonderful Echo Scarfs!
I think the choice of "scarfs" rather than "scarves" was smart because both the spelling and the pronunciation shade toward the individual item rather than the collective. One might shop for scarves, but one acquires a particular scarf. Each scarf we wear is a statement, and from what you've shown us, each Echo scarf is a work of high artisanship.
Then there's J.R.R. Tolkien's choice of "dwarves" over "dwarfs" in the Rings trilogy, the same considerations pointing to the collective race of beings rather than the anatomical anomaly.
You had me pondering a bunch of -F words early this morning.