As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

“People came up to us and said ‘you know, we love your masks. But I’m a glasses wearer. And my masks are causing my glasses to fog,’ ” said Maria Messier, co-owner of ExtendHer.

She and her business partner Joanne Frank’s creative juices started flowing. Their solution was an anti-fog face mask.

It wasn’t easy. But Frank is a world class designer who’s done work for some famous brands.

“I was designing for the Fifth Avenue stores. That was wonderful,” Frank said.

After multiple prototypes of the mask, with friends and family trying them out, they came up with a final product. They say it’s probably the most comfortable face mask you’ll ever wear, and that the special design makes it breathable and pretty lightweight.

“It has a nasal bridge that you can pinch, so when you’re wearing your glasses, it will not fog,” Messier said.

Face masks haven’t always been Messier and Frank’s focus. The duo normally manufactures unique baby products for families on the go. Their Saratoga Springs company, ExtendHer, has been in operation for the past six years. But when the pandemic hit, their core business had to take a back seat.

“We were like, ‘boy! What are we going to do?’ ” Messier said.

Frank had some extra fabric, and they started making masks to donate to medical facilities across the state.

“Fast forward, and we donated over 1,000 masks all across New York State,” Messier said. “It was a tremendous success.”

Those donations turned into a mask-making idea for the general public. Now they ship their masks all across the country, including their new anti-fog mask.

“So we were helping the country. We were helping people in general, and all along thinking that’s all we were doing. And here we were helping our business as well,” Frank said. “It was like it came from left field and blossomed into something that benefited a lot of people.”

If you’d like to know more about the company or to check out their masks, click here for their website.