Vanessa Schenck used to dread winter. For the longhaired stay-at-home mother from Connecticut, winter meant hat season: that maddening time of year when women pull their tresses into ponytails, braids and buns only to find that their lengthy locks don’t fit under bucket hats, stocking caps or any other winter headgear without creating lumps in the back of their hats.
Fed up with looking like “tennis ball heads,” Schenck and her best friend, Kate McCarthy, also a stay-at-home mom and a former knitwear designer, invented a knit cap that would give hope–and style–to the shivering ponytailed women of the world. The Girl 32 hat, as they call it, features a slit up the back that fastens with five sparkly buttons. To wear it, just slip on the hat, pull the ponytail through the slit and voila–a “do” that stays intact and ears that stay warm.
“The hat is so cute I practically live in it,” said Jessica Riley, 28, a singer from Somerville, Mass., who bought a striped version of the cap last year. Previously she had only two choices: wear her hair down or have a big ponytail bulge on the back of her head. “It makes so much sense, it should have been invented years ago.”
Schenck, 35, and McCarthy, 34, couldn’t believe such a hat wasn’t already in stores. “I thought I was just shopping in the wrong places,” said Schenck, who was so frustrated with her ponytail being smashed into the back of her neck that she ripped one of her own knit caps up the back and safety-pinned it back together. In that moment, the idea came to her.
More options
There are other kinds of ponytail hats on the market. Athletic brands like Turtle Fur and Pone Activewear offer versions in polar fleece and cotton. Knitted styles available at REI and Gap feature holes in the back or drawstring closures on top. And of course, there’s the perennial baseball cap–a favorite among the ponytail set because of its convenient keyhole in the back. But Schenck and McCarthy thought the other brands lacked two important features: the freedom to shift one’s ponytail from low to center to high and an extra splash of glamour.
Amy Croft, 35, was living in Fargo, N.D., last year when she started searching for a warm and hip winter hat she could wear with her hair up. “The other hats just have one hole at the nape of the neck,” said Croft. Croft said she liked that she can wear her Girl 32 hat with her ponytail perched anywhere on her head.
But a Girl 32 hat does not come cheap. At $65, the wool blend cap adorned with five Swarovski crystal buttons is twice the price of the J. Crew hat Schenck originally tore apart to create her first mock-up. And at $75 and $35, respectively, the matching scarves and gloves are also an investment. But even some frugal customers say that if a hat can promise more good hair days than bad, it’s worth it.
“The price threw me at first,” said Shelbi Gourniak, 25, a saleswoman from Allentown, Pa., who says she can’t function without pulling her thick hair back every day. “I wear it so much that it’s priceless to me.”
Expanded collection
Schenck and McCarthy launched their first collection in October 2004. Today, Girl 32’s patented hats are sold in more than 65 boutiques in the United States and Canada, and through its Web site, girl32.com. This year they expanded their collection to include gloves, hats for kids and scarves that include a zipper pocket for iPods and credit cards cleverly concealed under a band of sequins.
“We asked people what bugs them about their winter gloves, and they all said they hated taking them off to dial their cell phones,” Schenck said. So the Girl 32 gloves have hooded fingertips that slip on and off the thumb and forefinger. The inventive duo also plans to roll out hats for the pigtail crowd.
Schenck and McCarthy are pretty certain Girl 32’s customers have been mostly women. But the two fashion mavens think a ponytail-wearing man sporting one of their hats would be just fine, too.
“If the dudes want to wear it, I would be psyched,” Schenck said.
McCarthy agreed: “I’d say, work it in your own little world, honey. Sparkle.”
