This Week’s Model: Anna de Rijk

Where are you right now? I’m sitting in my apartment in Williamsburg.

Do you have a favorite spot in your neighborhood? There’s this café called Blackbird, which is really cute and reminds me of a European or French café. They have crepes, and sometimes there’s a piano player playing music. And then there are a few restaurants . . . I’m a vegetarian, so I really like Bliss, a vegetarian place, and some other Thai and Japanese places.

How long have you been vegetarian for? A year. I was raised [mostly] without meat — my parents mainly made pasta without meat every night, so since I didn’t really grow up with it, I didn’t really like it so much. And then a year ago, it was really strange — I was in a plane, and I got chicken, and I looked at the chicken, and I thought it just looked so gross. And then I felt like, well, I’m kind of half vegetarian [already], so I decided I’m not going to eat meat and chicken anymore, period. I eat a bit of fish because otherwise I feel really weak. I’m not vegan. I eat cheese and eggs and yogurt.

We heard you just came from Stockholm. You were shooting for H&M? Yeah, I was shooting for H&M. This was for the catalogue, but I shot the campaign earlier this month.

How long were you in Stockholm for? Two days. It was really nice because I had some spare time, and I went swimming and to the sauna and dinner and drinks with the other model [Clement Chabernaud]. It was a really relaxing time. The sauna, I never realized how good it makes you feel. You’re glowing after.

Any other recent travel? I traveled to the Bahamas for the H&M campaign, which was super nice. It was so crazy, because I’d never been there — we were flying in this plane which only had two chairs next to each other, and it made this stop in between. It was like taking the bus but through the air. And when you fly above it, the sea has such crazy colors, you can see all these turquoise and baby blue colors. It was really beautiful actually.