About

Trove Collections is a small editorial shop run by my mom Micki and me. The rest of our curator circle — Auntie Kristen, Auntie Angie, and our friends Cheryl Lynne and Tanya — bring in items from their own travels. Their work takes them all over the world. We see what they bring back.

The rule

Every item on this site is one that someone in our circle has personally used. Not "looked at on a trip." Not "saw on Instagram." Used. The Travelpro Crew 5 my mom flies with on every trip. The bayu cream Auntie Angie keeps in her toiletry kit. The polenta pan the restaurant in Argentina sold to Auntie Kristen after she finished the dish they cooked her in it. The Erborian primer my mom and I both keep in our makeup bags.

If a trend hits and none of us have actually tried it, it doesn't go here. That's the whole point.

Why we do this

Two reasons. The first is that we kept getting asked. People would see what my mom packed for a trip and ask "where did you get that?" often enough that writing it down made sense.

The second is gift-shopping. Specifically: the kind where you're trying to find something for a college-age girl, or your hard-to-shop-for sister-in-law, or a friend who already has everything. Online shopping is loud and the algorithms surface the same trending items to everyone. We have a different list — one made by people who've actually used the things.

Who's in the circle

Mom (Micki) runs the regional collections — Tokyo, Korea, the Levant, the pieces from her own life on the road. Auntie Kristen handles Germany (through a longtime art-dealer friend), Brazil, Argentina, Panama, and Sydney. Auntie Angie contributes to East Asia and skincare. Cheryl Lynne, our fairy godmother, brings in Japan and the UK. Tanya lived in Italy and just vacationed there again — Italy is her territory. I'm Eris, my mom's daughter. I run "Eris's Picks" — beauty, small jewelry, the kinds of things that are easier to gift to someone who already has the big things.

Those are the regions each of us tends to find the most in — but the lines aren't fixed. Any one of us can (and does) contribute to any collection. If Auntie Angie comes back from a trip to Lisbon with something she loved, it goes into Europe right next to Tanya's Lake Como finds. The circle is the circle; the regions are just where our paths cross most often.

We make a small commission when you buy through our links. We never feature anything just because we could earn from it. Full disclosure here.