Lingua Toasts Hardy Collab at the Waverly Inn

On Thursday afternoon, the Waverly Inn opened for a rare lunch service to celebrate the Lingua Franca and John Hardy Mother’s Day collaboration.

“This place has fed me, literally and figuratively,” said Lingua Franca founder Rachelle Hruska MacPherson. The brand’s newly opened town house headquarters are located just a few blocks away from the popular restaurant.

The new “Mother Franca Project” includes embroidered cashmere sweaters and a customizable John Hardy necklace, which features a sterling silver pendant that can be engraved with the initials of the wearer’s nearest and dearest. Inside the Waverly Inn, several Lingua Franca embroiderers were at work customizing cashmere sweaters for lunch guests, many of whom were already donning the John Hardy necklace.

“This collab is really to celebrate mothers and motherhood,” said MacPherson during lunch, noting that she became aware of John Hardy creative chairman Reed Krakoff while working as an assistant at Baron Capital Management, prior to founding GuestofaGuest.com and her fashion brand. “I finally got to meet [Krakoff] 15 years later, in the flesh, and he delivered,” added MacPherson. “The thing with Reed is he’s so excited to create really fun products. It’s fun to be around people who are excitable and passionate.”

Krakoff, who joined John Hardy in fall 2022 after four years as chief artistic officer for Tiffany & Co., noted that he and his wife Delphine have been longtime fans of Lingua Franca, and that the collaboration was ultimately born out of friendship.

“I started to do some new things with John Hardy, figure out how to reinvent that brand, and the idea of craftsmanship and customization and the laid-back-by-the-pool attitude of both brands seemed like they mesh really well together,” said Krakoff.

“John Hardy has an artisan community in Bali of about 400 artisans — and as you can see, Rachelle has even some artisans here today embroidering sweaters. So it seemed like there were a lot of similarities in terms of how we both approach design. Once we started talking it really made sense,” he added. “Most importantly, it’s been easy and fun and collaborative — as these things should be.”