Eva Chen’s Favorite Things | The Strategist

12 items in this article 4 items on sale!

12 items in this article 4 items on sale!

If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what everyday stuff famous people add to their carts — like hair spray or an electric toothbrush. We asked author and vice-president of fashion partnerships at Meta, Eva Chen, who recently released a collaboration with West Elm Kids, about the fountain pen, mesh pouches, and sunscreen she can’t live without.

I feel like there is not a thing in the world that would not be solved with a mesh pouch. I often post about and donate to teachers to help them decorate their classrooms and help them get supplies. A few years ago I learned that most teachers get a budget between $25 and $200 for decorations and supplies for students — a lot of schools don’t provide it. When I was looking at their wish lists on Amazon and Donors Choose, which is another organization I love, I noticed these pouches over and over again. I DM’d one of them and I was like, “What do you use the pouches for?” And they said literally everything, board games, puzzle pieces. I started doing that and it creates order in the chaos of children’s toys. These are see-through and kind of plasticky and keep wetness out, you can throw a bathing suit in there too. I also use it for snacks on long flights. Everything’s in a pouch.

Some people like old cars, some people like fine wine, vintage wine. I love a fountain pen. Fountain pens feel so civilized and kind of like a throwback. I follow this hashtag on Instagram #pointedpen. It’s a calligraphy- and fountain-pen-enthusiast hashtag. Last year, there was an international fountain-pen competition, and this brand Sailor won the competition. When I was in Paris for Fashion Week, someone on Instagram recommended this store Point and Plume. It’s a little jewel of a shop. It’s the size of a vestibule and it’s third generation, woman-owned, and the service there is amazing. I almost missed my show because I was testing out the pens. This is the pen that I bought.

I bought this during one of those Amazon middle-of-the-night wormholes. I looked up notepad plus file folder and this was the first thing that came up. It’s basically a file folder you can write on. I don’t know if I’m overthinking the brilliance of these, but I love it. And it comes in pretty colors. I feel like I don’t have to carry a notepad with me anymore. As much as I love notepads, it’s one less thing to carry.

I have a lot of food intolerances. I don’t want to say they’re allergies, but I remember life before probiotics and figuring out my food intolerances and I feel much better. I don’t know if it’s in my head that I feel better after taking them, but I do feel like the modern American diet is so deficient in so many things from omega-3s to omega-6s. I think of it as a little bit of insurance. I’m on my 67th bottle.

I love matcha. I drink one to two cups of it a day. I feel like the caffeine from matcha is much steadier. I haven’t had coffee probably in a decade, maybe longer. Kettl is this amazing local matcha store and purveyor, and it has a tiny little booth, almost like a pop-up. The umami of this matcha is so good. It’s so smooth. A lot of matcha tends to be too herbaceous or too bitter or too astringent, and I feel like this matcha, the Hanaka, is the perfect balance of all these elements. I highly suggest adding a splash of pineapple juice to an iced matcha. Not latte, no milk in it, but water matcha. It’s delicious.

It was the summer of Yuzu for myself and my husband, Tom. Yuzu is a Japanese citrus. I love a splash of this in matcha or just with sparkling water. It’s very concentrated. It’s the most refreshing summer drink.

One thing I’ve tried to commit to this summer was reapplying sunscreen. Some people recommend sunscreen powders, but I don’t like the finish. I like a more luminous, dewy finish. I absolutely love this Shiseido sunscreen stick. It’s a classic. It’s been around since I was a beauty editor, 15 to 20 years at least. I keep it in one of my clear pouches and throughout the day I do a quick swipe on the cheekbones. Have I seen a difference? No. Do I hope that it’ll make a difference in 20 years from now? Yes.

It’s almost a mix between Uno and Monopoly. My kids and I are obsessed with it. My 7-year-old and 9-year-old are really into board games now, which is really satisfying because it’s something that I can participate in. We played two hands of it last night. I won the first round, my daughter won the second. It’s just really fun. The fact that you can travel and go around with it is key for parents. It takes a minute to understand the rules. You have to collect three sets of properties, but you can also do fun things like steal someone’s card or collect rent from people. There’s one card that allows you to reverse someone’s action.

I have a hand sanitizer in every single pouch, every single place in my apartment. I’ve got three kids, sandboxes, toys picked up in communal spaces — so I’m always sanitizing whenever I can. I love Joanna’s hand sanitizer because aesthetically, the stainless steel, it’s beautiful. It also doesn’t leave a finish on your hands. There’s no strong scent. So many hand sanitizers smell sickly — or too alcohol-forward, like you’re dowsing your hands in a bowl of vodka. This is just a really great minimalist hand sanitizer.

To go with the hand sanitizer, I love the Evolve Together Monaco Hand Cream. I love the scent and would wear it as a fragrance if I could. I have super-, super-dry skin and it doesn’t leave a sticky finish on your hands. You can type on a laptop or touch a screen after you put it on and it doesn’t leave everything smudged and smeared.

I have very dry eyes. It’s a by-product of me sitting in front of a computer screen for probably 12 hours a day. I can literally feel them and sometimes by the end of the day, they feel gritty. Every ophthalmologist will tell you to do a heated compress at night to soothe your eyes for 15 minutes, but it’s wet and messy and then makes your pillowcase wet if you’re doing it before bed. And so I have this very probably vexing, multi-step process that I do every night that now my poor husband, Tom, has been roped into. Every night before I go to sleep, I take one of those stainless-steel insulated cups and pour boiling water into that. I let that sit for 15 minutes while I’m brushing my teeth or sending off the last email. Then I microwave this eye mask in the microwave for one minute, pour out the boiling water and put the hot eye mask into this hot insulated cup, screw it shut, and take it upstairs. Then when I’m ready to go to sleep, I unscrew my insulated cup and put it on. It’s still hot after an hour because I put the boiling water in it to heat the walls of the cup. It feels so heavenly.

My family and I are very centered around reading and books. You can name a neighborhood in the city, and I will tell you our favorite bookstore. It’s where my daughter wants to go on her vacation days. And so every piece in the collaboration — from the clothing to the dresser and the bed — has book and toy storage because I know parents, especially city parents, need pieces that can multitask as much as the parents do. I wanted to highlight the chair-and-a-half in this piece because it is so hard to find a seat that is good for kids, which sounds like it should be the simplest task of all. This chair is the perfect size to have a young child and an adult read bedtime stories for 30 minutes. A lot of parents register for gliders. It’s almost like a La-Z-Boy where you sit and nurse your child and feed your kid; it’s really deep, but it’s narrow. When you’ve graduated from the glider, but you don’t have space for a full love seat in the kid’s room and your spine requires more support than laying in a bed with your neck cricked like a cooked shrimp, this is the perfect chair for that.

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