Scanning Around With Gene: The Breck Girls

I was at my local Dollar Store the other day stocking up on cheap wrapping paper and picture frames when I happened on the sundries aisle and saw Breck shampoo and cream rinse. What a sad end to a once proud brand, I thought. In its day, Breck was one of the great American brands and was known not just for its quality, but for its distinctive advertising campaigns.
At the heart of Breck’s advertising, from 1936 to 1978 was a painting of a “Breck Girl,” an attractive woman with very pretty hair. Today’s images are all from Breck ads that appeared in various women’s magazines or are from the Smithsonian collection. Click on any image for a larger version. Here is the first Breck girl, Olga Armstrong, from 1936.

Dr. John Breck is credited with inventing one of the first liquid shampoos back in 1908. The shampoo was initially sold in beauty shops and advertising appeared in trade publications. These Breck girls are from 1963.


Edward Breck, the son of the founder, took over management of the company in 1936 and hired Charles Sheldon to do illustrations for the company’s advertising. Sheldon, who studied in Paris, was known for his paintings of Hollywood celebrities for Photoplay magazine. The Breck girls below are from 1964, 1962, and 1966.



By the time he retired in 1957, Sheldon had painted 107 oil paintings and pastels for Breck, and the company had become famous for its distinctive advertising style. Many of the early Breck girls were company employees, Breck family members, and local women who weren’t models.


Most of today’s images are from the second Breck girl illustrator, Ralph William Williams, who did the Breck girl portraits from 1957 until his death in 1976. These images are from 1974 and 1975.


The Breck company sponsored the America’s Junior Miss contest, and many of Williams’ illustrations were of contestants and winners of that competition.


Some future celebrities and super-models started as Breck girls, including Cheryl Tiegs, Jaclyn Smith, Cybill Shepherd, Kim Basinger, and Brooke Shields. At its heyday in the 1960s, Breck held a 20% share of the shampoo market and was considered one of America’s quality brands. Images below are from 1967 and 1976.


The Breck brand changed owners several times, and when Williams died in 1976, the Breck girls pretty much died with him, despite a few attempts to bring the advertising concept back with both illustration and photography.

Eventually the Breck brand was purchased by the Dollar Store chain and is now a house brand for them.

If you’re a fan of the TV show Mad Men, you can appreciate how a concept like the Breck girls may have worked throughout the 1960s. But the concept was pretty dated by the 1970s, and the illustrations became less effective as a sales tool.
I didn’t buy any Breck shampoo while visiting the Dollar Store. I figured for a buck it couldn’t be the same Breck I had grown up with. But it did make me think back to all those back-cover advertisements I remember from magazines as a kid.
Follow Gene on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SAWG

Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. He has spoken at events around the world and has written extensively on graphic design, intellectual-property rights, and publishing production in books and for magazines such as Print, U&lc, ID, Macworld, Graphic Exchange, AGI, and The Seybold Report. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.com.
  • Anonymous says:

    I remember the Breck Girls, especially those on the back cover of some magazine, as you mentioned. They always showed up at my junior high and high school in the sixties. If you took a regular #2 pencil eraser to those glossy pictures you could make their faces quite hideous. Just for laughs, I guess.

  • marksimonson says:

    I can’t look at these without remembering the Mad magazine spoof (painted by none other than Frank Frazetta). You can see it on this page: Blecch Ad

  • Anonymous says:

    Gene,

    As a baby boomer I remember the Breck Girl ads, and I can never think of them without recalling the 1960’s Mad magazine Bleck parody ad that featured an illustration of Ringo Starr done in the style of the Breck Girls by the late Frank Frazetta.

  • Anonymous says:

    I told a friend just last week that I would love to smell the original gloppy pink creme rinse that Breck made in the early ’60s. Didn’t get my hair cut til I was nine, so my mom and grandmother went through a lot of that stuff, getting the tangles out.
    -Kathy

  • Anonymous says:

    Being the Breck Girl artist back then would’ve been a sweet gig. Those illustrations and paintings are awesome!

  • Anonymous says:

    I’m from Brazil. These drawings are very beautiful. But I would like to see the drawing of beautiful Jaclyn Smith, I love her. In my opnion she has the most beautiful and perfect face ever.
    Do you have more drawings from Breck Shampoo? Show to us.
    Don’t forget Jaclyn Smith.
    Thank you.

  • gihane says:

    very beautiful

  • Anna Streitman says:

    Enjoyed your history of Breck shampoo advertising art. Found it online while seeking theI name of a commercial artist active in the 1950’s and 1960’s, whose work was often published in Ladie’s Home Jourbnal and other women’s’ magazines of that era. So far, no success! This man’s first name was Jon…not John. Can’t recall his last name. This is kdriving me crazy!!! Can you enlighten me?

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