Product Recall: Scrunchies
Kate and Doree throw their hair up into the iconic ponytail holder of the 80’s and 90’s and detail how this inexpensive piece of fabric-covered-elastic became the must-have accessory of a generation.
To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show or shopmyshelf.us/forever35.
Follow the podcast on Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and join the Forever35 Facebook Group (Password: Serums).
Sign up for the newsletter! At forever35podcast.com/newsletter.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.
Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we're not experts.
Doree: We're not. We're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: And today we are bringing you a product recall, a weekly episode where we dig deeper into the history of an iconic product and its impact every Friday here on Forever35. And yes, we do take requests.
Doree: We do take requests. We have a big spreadsheet of requests. So send in those requests to (781) 591-0390 by text or voicemail. Or you can email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com. And just a reminder that everything we talk about on these episodes, all of our sources and the videos and commercials and stuff like that, those are all on our website Forever35podcast.com. So if you're interested in digging a little deeper toot a loot on over to our website, we're also on Instagram @Forever35podcast, and you can join the Forever35 Facebook group, the Password is Serums. We have a newsletter at Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. And you can shop our favorite products at shopmy.us/forever35.
Kate: And every time we do a product recall episode, one of us really serves as the leader and one of us serves, or let's say the guide and the other one is a participant on the experience.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Today you're the guide,
Doree: but, a someone who's really moving the story along, I think.
Kate: Yeah, you and I are in a boat and you are steer paddling and steering at the front, and I'm just kind of helping a little bit in the back, but really I'm also, I'm here for the color commentary.
Doree: Okay. Okay. Well, Kate, today we are talking about something that's a little bit outside of the things that the products that we have already discussed in that, first of all, it is a hair product.
Kate: Love it.
Doree: And second of all, it's not a consumable in that it's not something that you use up. It's something reusable and over and over and over again. And in fact, I believe we are both wearing them today.
Kate: You know what? I'm not. I'm wearing another product that is reusable.,
Doree: I can't really see behind your headphones.
Kate: Well tell the people what we're talking about today
Doree: we are talking about scrunchies.
Kate: Okay. I'm so excited. I'm actually in a hair clip.
Doree: Oh, you're in a hair clip. Okay.
Kate: I do wear scrunchies. And one thing I'm actually interested in kind of talking about and hearing about is the way in which about five years ago, scrunchies had a resurgence because I wouldn't have been caught dead in a scrunchy. Literally at the beginning of, I would say toward the end of the last decade, I started to scrunch maybe like 2017, 2018.
Doree: Okay, Kate, we're going to get into that.
Kate: I mean, wouldn't be caught dead.
Doree: But first let's talk about what a scrunchy is. What is a scrunchy?
Kate: Why do we call it that?
Doree: A scrunchy is a fabric covered hair elastic, essentially. So a regular old hair elastic is kind of like a rubber band, usually very thin and scrunchies are fabric covered. So they're better for your hair. They're not as hard on your hair as a tight hair elastic. They come in all different colors and fabrics. You can get them for very cheap. You can also pay a lot for your scrunchy. And Kate, you alluded to something that we are going to get into, but I think we want to go back to the origins of the scrunchy. So picture it, it's the mid eighties. You are recently divorced from
Kate: I am, okay.
Doree: From your heir to the Revlon Cosmetics fortune.
Kate: Oh my God. I am recently divorced. Divorced recently divorced from Revlon Air Husband.
Doree: Yes, husband.
Kate: Okay.
Doree: You are a woman. You were only married to him for a year. So it wasn't a long marriage.
Kate: It was a year that felt like 50 years.
Doree: But you dated him for six years before that.
Kate: Yes.
Doree: But the marriage itself only lasted for a year.
Kate: Ok.
Doree: And now a year later, you're kind of at loose ends, like your house sitting in the Hamptons
Kate: sounds kind of nice actually.
Doree: You had been a singer, a songwriter, a music teacher, but now you don't really have any money and you're so stressed out that your hair starts to thin.
Kate: So Doree, I'm in my, I'm house sitting in the Hamptons.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: I'm recently divorced from I, I'm assuming a real pain in the ass. And how old am I? Was my hair starts thinning.
Doree: You are in your early forties.
Kate: Okay. All right.
Doree: Okay. Also, your name is Rami Hunt Revson.
Kate: I love that name. I love a Romi.
Doree: The hunt is from a previous marriage that is not her original name. And she had been married to John Revson, who was an heir to the Revlon fortune.
Kate: So Okay, Revson. Revlon. Okay.
Doree: Exactly. You get it. So Rami later tells the Washington Post that wrote about her, profiled her in the mid nineties. She says, I was so stressed out, my hair was thinning. And she realized she needed something really gentle to hold her hair back. She didn't want to damage it. And also not a lot of things held it. She couldn't have worn a hair clip like you, like you're wearing right now. She didn't have enough hair. Sure. She even tried ribbon and it didn't hold her hair firmly enough. The ribbon needed some elastic, but elastic alone was too rough on her hair. But then she was like, wait a second, I'm going to combine those. And she realized she was onto something.
Kate: So Rami did she, let's imagine she takes out a sewing machine and she sews cloth around an elastic
Doree: that the mechanics of that have been lost to history.
Kate: That's fine. We can imagine.
Doree: Yeah. But yeah, she apparently gets, I mean, I'm assuming she has rich friends at this point, and she gets some rich friends to help her patent it. And she patents the invention, which by the way, she names scunci.
Kate: And is she the founder of the scunci hair? Hair company? C U N C I?
Doree: We're going to, yes. We're going to get to that scunci. I think it's how you pronounce it, was the name of her. Was the name her dog.
Kate: Ooh, that's a strange, I mean, I would've just called it the Rammi, but, okay.
Doree: So Scunci was the name of her dog.
Kate: Okay.
Doree: And she, Okay. So here is some lore that pops up in every article about the scrunchy that to my knowledge, has never been fact checked and seems to me to be possibly apocryphal. So I'm just going to inject that note of skepticism into what I'm about to say.
Kate: Okay. Okay.
Doree: And there's no way for me to fact check this at this point.
Kate: That's fair.
Doree: She claims that she got 20 million in orders in her first month.
Kate: Wait. And we're talking in the late eighties,
Doree: in the mid, in the late eighties. I don't believe it.
Kate: Yeah,
Doree: just don't believe it. So I don't know. She sounds like a real character. And she died last year. It wouldn't, it wouldn't shock me if she sort of exaggerated this number to bulk up her tail of the invention. But she claims, again, I'm just going to say this is what she claims. She claims that she got 20 million in orders her first month, and that it was so many orders that her business went under because she couldn't keep up with the demand.
Kate: Oh man. I feel like that's a classic shark tank dilemma.
Doree: Yes. Yes. Do you have the capabilities? And we have no, there's no information out there about who was manufacturing these, what was her business savvy, you know what I mean? It's not clear. So to me, this is a sort of convenient narrative, right? Oh, I got so many orders. I got 20 million in orders
Kate: also. Are these like $50 scrunchies?
Doree: No, they're like $3 scrunchies. It just seems
Kate: it's the eighties.
Doree: Yeah. It seems totally impossible. But nevertheless, this is what has been, what's the word? This is what has been kind of passed down as the legend of the scrunchy.
Kate: I'm all for an embellished history.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: May romi rest in peace with a great story about her.
Doree: Totally. So then what happens is a bunch of established manufacturers get in on the craze and start making their own, including one that calls itself Scunci.
Kate: So wait a second. So the scunci that I see at Target, or cvs when I go by hair elastics, that is not Rami?
Doree: that is not her company. But after the break, we're going to get into what happened when these other companies that had actual manufacturing capabilities, started making scrunchies. So we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. Okay? So where we left off was that our pal Rami claims she had gotten this absolutely astronomical number of orders in her first month of having these for sale.
Kate: Wait a second, that's the first month.
Doree: Yes. She said she got 20 million in orders her first month. And also keep in mind, this is like pre-internet, like were right. Were these wholesale orders, who was buying them? Where was she selling them? It's all very vague.
Kate: Were people sending her checks?
Doree: Were people, right? Was this a lot of the mail order people that we've talked about already on the product recalls? Was she placing small advertisements in the back of magazines and saying, send $3 to I need this post post office box. What did she do with the 20 million? I mean, there's just a lot of unanswered questions about this alleged 20 million that I think at this point, we'll probably never be answered. But what she does is she hires a lawyer,
Kate: always a smart move.
Doree: Because keep in mind, she had patented the scrunchy.
Kate: Oh,
Doree: She had patented the scrunchy.
Kate: So Smart. So smart.
Doree: And in the pat, we'll put this on the website as well. So the patent shows someone with longish hair with their hair back in a scrunchy, and then it shows the scrunchy on the wrist. So from the beginning, the scrunchy was sort of meant to be worn on the wrist. And then there's kind of a side view, and then there's a view from above.
Kate: I want to say that the side view looks like a piece of feces.
Doree: It does
Kate: Figure three.
Doree: Yeah, it does.
Kate: Yeah. Everybody should go check this out. It does. Look, you're right. Everything looks else. Looks like a scrunchy. You're not. And then there's just a piece of poop.
Doree: Look, Kate.
Kate: Okay. It was September 22nd, 1987. All right. Okay. I don't hold anybody at fault.
Doree: So she hires a lawyer to enforce her patent.
Kate: Good for her.
Doree: And she basically gets all these companies to, they have to license the scrunchy from her.
Kate: Yes.
Doree: So she rakes in the dough.
Kate: Good. Oh my God. Good.
Doree: From the scrunchy. But she's kind of a complicated figure. Later. There's some legal wrangling. I don't want to get too in the weeds, but she doesn't end up making as much money as she possibly maybe could have. But either way, the takeaway is that she creates a phenomenon by, I would say by the early nineties, every, I'm just going to say girl, because at that point it was girls. Every girl I knew just wore had a scrunchy. I mean, myself included, had a scrunchy on her wrist at all times.
Kate: Yeah. I mean, I don't think you can of the eighties, especially the late eighties, without thinking of a scrunchy.
Doree: And the the early nineties, I think.
Kate: Yeah, they go hand in hand.
Doree: They go hand in hand. So it was just the ubiquity of scrunchies is almost hard to explain now. They were just everywhere.
Kate: That's a really good point. It is. It there. It is hard to explain. And also trends were being cycled around in such a different way, right?
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Cause you couldn't just go on Instagram and be like, oh, look at all these influencers wearing scrunchies.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: They got around, I don't know how organically, I guess.
Doree: Totally. So there's another, there's like a simultaneous invention in the late eighties in 1987 by a woman named Collette Maloof, who you may have heard of. She is like a high-end hair accessories designer essentially, who still sell her stuff is still for sale. And in 1987, she was recently out of college, she went to bu and she invented something that she called the Maloof Poof,
Kate: I love it.
Doree: Which the LA Times later described as a silk covered ponytail holder that looked like a rosette, the stylish precursor to the scrunchy. Now
Kate: what?
Doree: This is just inaccurate because Romi had patented the Scrunchy the same year that the Maloof poof came out. But it's just interesting that these two products were developed essentially simultaneously. Kate, I'm sending you a link to an eBay listing for a Maloof poof. It's essentially like a huge scrunchy.
Kate: Yeah. I now have a bunch of these from Kitch, which makes a company that makes silky scrunchies. Yeah. This is just a scrunchy.
Doree: It's basically just a scrunchy. But there are a few articles here and there that credit her with being the invention of the scrunchy. And here's something interesting too. In my Googling, I found a link to a podcast episode where Collette Maloof is interviewed, and in the description of the podcast episode, it says, she talks about how she invented the Maloof, poof, the scrunchy, blah, blah, blah. You can't access the episode. It is unavailable.
Kate: WOO did Romi shut that down from the grave?
Doree: So I'm like, did Romi shut that down? It came out in 2019. So before Romi died. And we know that Romi is litigious, so maybe Romi was like, excuse me, Colette, you did not invent the scrunchy.
Kate: Yeah. I think I'm on team. I know Rami is a little bit of a character, but I kind of feel like I'm on Team Romi here having looked at the Maloof. Poof.
Doree: Totally, totally. Okay. So just as kind of an example of the way that Scrunchies had just fully permeated youth and pop culture, Kate, I want you to watch the first link that I sent you. Okay. One moment please.
Clip: Scrunch. And wear, now you can make your own hair scrunches with the scrunch and wear set. It's easy. Just crunch 'em, snap 'em, scrunch 'em, wear 'em, scrunch and wear. You can decorate your hair scrunches to match your favorite outfits. Have fun with your hair, with scrunch and wear. Nothing's easier than scrunch and wear crunch 'em, snap 'em scrunch. And now you can make scrunch and wear minis and Burts with sparkling beads and charms. Scr and wear fashion magic scrunch and wear set minis and burettes sold separately.
Kate: I would've wanted this scrunch and wear.
Doree: Right. So this is from 1996.
Kate: Oh, okay. I would've been too old, but yeah,
Doree: you were too old. But had you been in the right age group? Yeah. And I'm curious whether this is something that Rami got. Was this part of the license? I kind of feel like, no. I almost feel like them calling it the scrunch and wear was like away around it. I don't know.
Kate: Well, and they call the scrunchies Scrunches. You can hear the voiceover calling it a scrunch.
Doree: Totally. Totally.
Kate: Rami is, she has eyes everywhere.
Doree: She really, she does. She does.
Kate: I I would've loved to been her lawyer.
Doree: In 1997, I found an interview with Julia, and one of the things she says in the interview is she admits to spending hundreds of dollars on scrunchies.
Kate: Well, I mean, Elaine Bennice, her character on Seinfeld has, I like, always has a scrunchy in her hair hairs often half up, half down in a scrunch.
Doree: She herself was wearing scrunchies, although she says she bought so many that she had to give them away.
Kate: Maybe. What if she's the one who bought 20 million worth of Oh, my scrunchies.
Doree: Okay. Yes. All right.
Kate: Okay. So we see their influence.
Doree: Yes. But before we take another break, I just want to read you what I think is maybe my favorite instance of the scrunchy in pop culture. Are you ready?
Kate: Oh my God. Okay. Yes.
Doree: Okay. This is from an issue, the September 19th, 1999 issue of Cosmopolitan. And the subhead of this story about sex is AP penis pleasing. Okay. Are you ready?
Kate: Oh my God.
Doree: Sure. You know how to wake up his Willie.
Kate: Oh my God.
Doree: But how do you make a major impact on his member? Here are a few penis projects that will put him in absolute awe of your creativity
Kate: penis projects?
Doree: First, grab a hair scrunchy. That's not too tight. Quote, after he's fully erect, wrap it around the base of his testicles and the base of his penis. Wrap it twice if it's too loose. Explains Kathy Winks, co-author of The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex. Make sure the scrunchy is tightly secured, but not so tight that it's uncomfortable. Once your passion prop is in place, stroke or kiss his penis. Don't be surprised if he moans more than usual. Quote, that extra squeeze at the base of his genitals, keeps the blood trapped inside his erection and causes pleasurable pressure. Says wings.
Kate: What? So it's just a cock ring?
Doree: Yes. Essentially.
Kate: Can you just, okay, just roll. Just like, let's just do some role-playing for a minute here. It's 1999. You read that issue of Cosmo and you're like, I'm not really wearing all these scrunchies anymore. Okay. So you go with your partner and you're like, hold on. And then you pull out a hair tight, and then you start wrapping your fucking hair tie around his dick. Can you imagine? Has anyone done this? Has, if youre listening, this is my question. Have you wrapped the scrunchy around your partner's genitals? Oh no. Scrunch is going to get dirty.
Doree: Does that then become the sex scrunchy?
Kate: Yes. Yes. You don't put that back in your hair.
Doree: Oh my God.
Kate: It's the same as a, do you have barf? Do you have a barf bucket? In my family, we always had a bowl that became the thing people vomited in when they got sick. And I have one, and it's labeled, but it's a, It was like, it's like a former mixing bowl. Once you throw up in the mixing bowl, even if you wash it in a dishwasher, hot water, you don't go back to using it.
Doree: Once you put a scrunchy on your partner's dick, you don't put it in your hair.
Kate: I mean, unless you're desperate. Look like you ever have that moment where you're working out and you need a hair tie.
Doree: Oh God.
Kate: And you can't find any. And all you have is the sex scrunchy. I would put it in.
Doree: It's rough.
Kate: So, wow, that's wild.
Doree: That I think that just speaks to the ubiquity and the power of the scrunchy. But what's that saying? The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Kate: Yeah. That's what they say about Dick's wrapped in Scrunchy Doree. That's like a little bit of a leap, but I'm going to go with it. Well, okay. I can't wait.
Doree: We're going to take a break and,
Kate: okay.
Doree: And we're going to talk about the fall. And to be honest, I mean to be perfectly transparent, the eventual rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the scrunchy.
Kate: Okay.
Doree: All, we'll be right back. All right. We are back. So Kate, remember the early odds?
Kate: Yes. Are we talking like 2001 to three kind of?
Doree: Yes. Yes, yes. Do you remember how basically everyone, I mean, well, look, I don't want to speak for you. I know that I watched Sex in the City every week.
Kate: Yes.
Doree: I feel like everyone I knew watched Sex in the City. Even if you sort of side eyed it, you still watched it.
Kate: Yes, totally.
Doree: It was just part of the popular, the pop culture lexicon. So, okay. I would like you to click on the second link that I sent you, and just as a little bit of setup, oh, I forget. I think this is season six.
Kate: It says here Season six, episode four.
Doree: Yes. Okay, so this is season six. Carrie is dating Burger.
Kate: Oh.
Doree: And they have a little bit of a fight, so, okay. All right. Let's mute ourselves. And here we go. Watch this.
Clip: All right. If you're still not finished, it's all over between us. I just finished it just this minute. I swear. I can't date a slow reader. Are you done? Question is, are you Done? Yes, I'm done. And if you would shut your trap, I could tell you I loved it. Except for one huge problem. You have your leading lady running all over town wearing a scrunchy. A scrunchy. The hair thing. What's wrong with that? No woman who works at W Magazine and lives on Perry Street would be caught dead at a hip downtown restaurant wearing a scrunchy. Man, it's a good thing I came along because you may know the fellas, but I know the ladies. Great. Can I read you my favorite part? No, I'm done talking about the book we ordering in.
Kate: Oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts just based on that one clip.
Doree: Let's hear 'em.
Kate: Okay. I mean, number one, Sarah Jessica Parker is Overacting that scene.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Nobody's business so badly. A scrunchy, she, but two, she's not wrong. Carrie is not wrong. No. Editor at W Magazine on Par, who lives on Perry Street in 2003.
Doree: Yes. No way.
Kate: Second observation. Burger was Burger. I forget how he's so hot. I forgot. I forget that actor's name, but he's so hot.
Doree: He's hot.
Kate: I forgot he's hot.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: Two or three an excellent. It just EnCap that scene encapsulates the male ego in such an amazing way when he shuts her down.
Doree: One thousand Percent
Kate: He won't talk about the book anymore because she makes a very accurate critique.
Doree: The one thing that I will say about that though, as an author, she's clearly reading a finished, like a published copy, right?
Kate: Not like an arc.
Doree: Right. She's not reading a man. She's not reading manuscript pages. It's already published. We think it's already published at that point. It's like, okay, but what the fuck am I supposed to do about this?
Kate: This is when you write into the Forever35 podcast, and you're like, my boyfriend wrote a really great book, but he made a character wearing a scrunchy. It's already published. Do I give him the feedback?
Doree: Totally.
Kate: Or Not.
Doree: Totally, totally. But I mean, she's of course, correct.
Kate: Yes.
Doree: I mean, he's a douchebag. The worst and the worst.
Kate: And look, this is not a Sex and City podcast, but if it was, we could do a seven series arc on how he's terrible so bad. Post it note forever.
Doree: But anyway, so this just shows by 2003, a mere four years after Cosmo was telling you to use your scrunchy during sex scrunchies were out.
Kate: Very not cool.
Doree: Very not cool. Everyone was wearing thin black hair elastics on their wrists.
Kate: Yep. Oh, yes. That was it. And that's also the kind of hair elastic that kind of looks like a little tie.
Doree: Yes.
Kate: Oh, you remember those are called, but they became kind of big in the S
Doree: Yes. But it was much more minimal.
Kate: Yes. A sleek ponytail.
Doree: I mean, a sleek ponytail.
Kate: Look, Carolyn Bassett Kennedy, did she ever wear a scrunchy? Because I do feel like a minimalist style. Maybe never was in, I'm now Googling Carolyn Bassett.
Doree: That's interesting. I just always picture with her hair down, but I don't don't know.
Kate: She loved a sleek pony.
Doree: She loved. Yeah, you're right. You're right. She did Style icon.
Kate: I love her. Okay. No, I don't see her in a scrunchy. Okay, interesting. All right.
Doree: So whereas in the eighties and nineties, scrunchies are just sort of ubiquitous in pop culture and just mentioned, I would say positively everywhere. Now you get things like Amy Sadis being interviewed in June, 2005 and out, and she's telling this anecdote. And part of the anecdote is, I used to live across from this girl, one of those awful girls who were scrunchies. And I could see her having sex with her boyfriend,
Kate: probably using it scrunchy on his dick.
Doree: Lot of scrunchy and sex crossover, I'm noticing. But anyway, she like,
Kate: Who knew? Ok.
Doree: But what was so funny to me about this quote is a scrunchy by this point has become such a signifier of someone who is out of step out touch, not cool, really like passe. And it happened fast. But then we go through a few years of the minimalist hair accessories. And then in the early teens, something happens In November, 2013, the London newspaper, the observer notes that on recent catwalks, Vivian Westwood, Missoni, Louis Vuitton and others, had wound scrunchies across between a freely anti macassar and a pair of nylon tights around the ponytails of dozens of models as part of a revival that includes neons and grunge. And Mark Jacobs was selling scrunchies for 25 pounds. Miss Sony was selling scrunchies for 55 pounds. Top Shop and American Apparel started selling them for four pounds socialites. And they named Czech Prince Harry's girlfriend Crested a bonus as being rarely seen without one. They quote a stylist who says that scrunchies represented attitude, which feels like what young London is all about at the moment. And Madonna is wearing a big one. Hillary Clinton wore one. So the scrunchy is kind of coming back at this point. And also, it's also funny to me that this Sex and the City episode, whenever now, whenever the scrunchy gets discussed after 2003, the Sex and the City episode is mentioned.
Kate: Of course.
Doree: So then they're just back.
Kate: So someone just decided, and they're back.
Doree: Someone just decided, and they're back. And then again, in 2019, the writer Amanda Mul, who we're both big fans of rights in the Atlantic about the return of the scrunchy, I guess there was another, the Maner Gabrielle Fall 2017 runway show was apparently another big scrunchy, was another big exhibition of the scrunchy. And articles are written about the return of the scrunchy again, which actually also dovetails with the timing that you were talking about in the beginning of the episode.
Kate: It sure does. Wow.
Doree: So I actually think that the London Observer article was maybe a little bit ahead of the curve, or maybe it happened sooner in London than it did over here. But I also feel like it was more like post, maybe post 2015 that scrunchies really started coming back here.
Kate: Yeah. I can remember what inspired me to get a bunch of scrunchies, which is Jackie Johnson, I think talking about a natural, cute how Jonathan VanNess told her to get some satin scrunchies and silk scrunchy, I can't remember, satin scrunchies to sleep with at night. And I was like, oh. And then I ordered a ton of them, and then I just started using them all the time.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: And here we are.
Doree: Amanda kind of takes a zoomed out view about this. And she writes that when the two thousands came, everything got really tiny and tight, including hair ties, nylon wrapped blast, black elastic chords became the norm. The golden age of scrunchies had an unusually ignominious and decisive end. The style was the but of a famous sex in the city joke in the early two thousands that declared the scrunchy hair tie non grata for fashionable, silly city dwellers. Carrie Bradshaw found it hopelessly Middle American and middle class. The scrunchy was mostly relegated to the home, used to hold people's hair in place while they slept or washed their faces. Now, those tiny tight hair bands have been in favor even longer than their predecessors. Consumer restlessness is right on time. And the 1990s are the obvious choice for reconsideration, for reasons that run much deeper than hair accessories is. So the scrunchy is back. And to me at least, they're not really going anywhere.
Kate: No. Because if that's 2017, we're now six years into this.
Doree: Well, she wrote the article in 2019, but
Kate: Oh, sorry. Sorry.
Doree: Kind of like name checked the 2017 fashion show.
Kate: Yeah. I think we're here. They're here to stay.
Doree: Well, I think we are, as a culture, much more aware of hair health now, and putting your hair back in those tiny, tight hair elastics is not that great for your hair. It's much gentler on your hair to have the fabric, especially the satin one that you just talked about.
Kate: I just have a memory of probably around high school college of, I would rather the thought of wearing a scrunchy was fucking mortifying There. It something shifted and that I was so hesitant to dip a toe back in. And that was kind of the first moment where I felt old, where I was like, people are wearing banana clips and scrunchies again. And the banana clips kind of seemed to have faded, but the scrunchies
Doree: The scrunchy lives on.
Kate: Well, Rami's legacy is bold and big.
Doree: Bold and big, strong. And I do just,
Kate: that is fascinating. Doree.
Doree: Well, before we wrap up, I do just want to mention that Rami tried to kind of replicate the success of the scrunchy. She invented another hair accessory and patented it in 1994.
Kate: What is it called?
Doree: A cap with a sealable compartment.
Kate: Okay. That doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Doree: No, no, it sure doesn't have,
Kate: it's called it called a cap with a scalable de this.
Doree: She never what? To my knowledge, she never gave it a real name. Okay. But that is what the patent is for The patent. I just texted it to you.
Kate: Oh, No.
Doree: So you know what this reminded me of?
Kate: Oh, no.
Doree: You know what those reminded me of
Kate: what
Doree: this reminded me of Lance, on the other two, who's always inventing shoes.
Kate: Oh my God, yes. Beloved Forever35, show the other two.
Doree: I believe that he invent, I was trying to find this and I couldn't find it. And I was like, did I make this up? But I believe this sounds like the shoe inventions he has is a shoe that is also a purse, has a compartment for money. And this was essentially what she was doing. She was like, I'm going to make a hat that is also a purse. It has a pocket, it's a hat with pocket.
Kate: It has a pocket.
Doree: It's a hat with a pocket.
Kate: Which is like, it's not the worst idea. But the two examples are
Doree: No, the two examples are terrible.
Kate: It's not good.
Doree: But the patent expired in 2004. She never renewed it. So
Kate: new Forever35 merch,
Doree: you could get in on that cap with a receivable pouch.
Kate: I mean, look, worse ideas have made it big.
Doree: I mean, I feel like there, Lance, some of Lance's ideas aren't that bad.
Kate: Yeah. I mean, maybe this is how we retire.
Doree: Yeah.
Kate: This is how we fund our lifestyle.
Doree: Totally.
Kate: Into our sixties Doree.
Doree: Totally. Totally.
Kate: Oh, RIP, Rami RIP
Doree: RIP. Thank you for your contributions to the culture.
Kate: I mean, truly. That's a big one.
Doree: Yeah. Kate, thank you for coming on this journey with me. Thank you, listeners, talk to you soon. Bye
Kate: Bye.