I’m sure you’ve seen the sweaters around. The cashmere crewnecks are soft to the touch and come in leather-book-cover colors like maroon and blue. Square labels bearing the slogan “Lingua Franca” in a quirky, girly font are used to brand them. The true branding, however, is found in the needlework over the breast, which has sentiments like “I read banned books” and “Educate girls, change the world” and looks lovely and delicate.
Rachelle Hruska McPherson, who also designed the Gossip Girl-coded party website Guest of a Guest, started Lingua Franca. When she first started embroidering sweaters, the former “girl boss,” who now claims that “girl bosses are dead,” was trying to deal with it.
I was unable to eat or sleep. I could sew, though,” she adds. In the small but fashionable seaside resort of Montauk, New York, a pile of prototype sweaters with the words “Booyah” became popular and were coveted by celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio. But it wasn’t until a sweater that said “I Miss Barack” (meaning Obama) went viral on Instagram in 2018 that Hruska McPherson shifted a significant portion of her company to politically charged cashmere. These pieces cost over $400 (£300) each and have big phrases printed on them.
