Anthropologie Chief Creative Officer Richa Srivastava on Japanese stationery, chore jackets and her ‘body bag’ duffel

“You notice every fit, and you notice every seam, and you notice every construction detail,” she said. “Why is it that you gravitate towards that one white tee versus another white tee? That part of my brain is always on.”

Srivastava has spent much of her career thinking about why people fall in love with certain objects. As Anthropologie’s chief creative officer of design, she leads design across the retailer’s women’s apparel business. She grew up in India and moved to the U.S. for fashion school at FIT, landing in New York, where she spent close to two decades working at design houses like Adrianna Papell and Liz Claiborne. She joined Anthropologie over a decade ago and, true New Yorker that she is, spent a full year commuting two hours each way from the city before finally settling in Philadelphia, where the retailer is headquartered.

“I was very much like, ‘I’m never going to leave New York,’ and then Philly slowly won me over,” she said.

Like a lot of us, Srivastava treats her online cart as a wish list. 

“I’m one of those people that’s kind of a chronic add-to-cart type of person,” she said. “Buying is like a whole separate decision.”

Souvenir shopping

When Srivastava gets ready to travel, she always leaves room for one extra bag on the way home. Tucked into her suitcase is an empty yet oversized REI duffel that she jokingly calls her “body bag.” It packs down to almost nothing but unfolds into a giant tote that inevitably comes home stuffed with finds from antique shops, design stores and fashion boutiques. One trip to Copenhagen, for instance, yielded Russian nesting dolls that reminded her of a similar set her military father brought home after spending a year stationed in Russia.

“That’s part of what I really love about traveling,” Srivastava said. “You run into something, or you find something that you totally didn’t expect to see, and then you buy it, and then it forever becomes a memory.”

Srivastava’s duffel bag gets a real workout. On another trip, she bought a gravity tray by a Japanese designer after spotting it at a photography exhibit. In fact, Japan is one of her favorite travel destinations for shopping because she feels day-to-day life there is very driven by design and creativity. As she put it, “Every little object that you would use on a daily basis is brilliantly designed.”

One notable example is stationery. Actually, Srivastava is a self-described “stationery nerd,” and Tokyo, in particular, is “a treat” because it’s “the place to be” for stationery. Pens, notebooks, planners and organizers all make the trip home with her.

Vintage favorites and repeat buys 

While new brands constantly appear on her radar, Srivastava’s heart belongs to vintage fashion. She still searches for pieces from designers she admired while studying fashion, including Maison Margiela, Gianfranco Ferré and Anne Valérie Hash.

Her closet is full of repeat purchases, too. Sneakers and chore jackets top the list. “There’s always going to be a perfect one,” Srivastava said. “Judging by my closet, I found the perfect one, like, 25 times at least.”

She’s also not immune to a trend cycle, admitting to caving on both mesh ballet flats and barrel jeans. “The algorithm won,” she said of finally buying the flats after seeing them repeatedly and telling herself she wouldn’t buy them.

An emotional shopper

By her own admission, Srivastava is an emotional shopper.

“If there’s anything that I love, I’ll find a way to justify it to myself,” she said, “I’ve been like that since as long as I can remember.”

Once, a colleague had a tattoo of an abstract artwork she’d created herself, and Srivastava loved it enough to ask her to print it on a T-shirt. She bought it on the spot. “I truly cherish it,” she said, “and once it’s threadbare, I’m going to frame whatever’s left of it. That’s how attached I get.”