Mona is profoundly Danish (“My favourite dish is smørrebrød, buttered rye bread topped with various ingredients. I’m not much of a cook yet, but I want to challenge myself with more complex, traditional recipes”), yet the way she moves through the world reflects her multi-ethnic origins.

Among her proudest professional milestones is undoubtedly the cover she shot for Vogue France, in which she embraces Ugbad Abdi, a model who shares her Somali roots. By now, Mona is a seasoned magazine cover star, having appeared on the covers of Vogue Japan, Vogue Korea and British Vogue, as well as Vogue Italia. For us, in August 2021, she appeared in a shoot and an issue celebrating Naples; this time she flew to Puglia, to Borgo Egnazia. It was her birthday, and the weather was, to say the least, unexpected. “I was expecting sunshine and warmth, and instead it was pouring with rain and freezing cold. Posing in the cold isn’t easy. But I think the photos are even more special for it, with such unusual light.” Mona isn’t easily discouraged. “I have an open mind, I always manage to get by. That’s why I’ve never found myself in unpleasant situations, even when travelling alone. I do it often, it gives me a fresh perspective on the world and on myself. I’d recommend it to anyone who can, it genuinely changes your life.” She spent eight days on her own in Egypt, a country she already knew from a trip with her father, and more recently two weeks in the Dominican Republic. “I owe a lot to that trip: one evening on the beach I discovered jazz and fell in love with it.” Tougaard, who loves making playlists for the people she cares about (“The last one was for a friend leaving for Bali”), admits to preferring instrumental tracks, or, failing that, sad songs. In recent months she’s been obsessed with Aretha Franklin’s Call Me and Gerry Mulligan’s version of Prelude in E Minor. “I don’t connect with tracks that are too ‘happy’; it’s the darker emotions that make me reflect.”

It’s no surprise that among her favourite films is Interstellar, but also IT, a cornerstone of ‘90s horror cinema that she finds somehow “comforting”. “There was a period when I’d watch it late at night and, strange as it sounds, it kept me company.” We ask whether she ever has nightmares. She describes one that lasted a week, unfolding like a TV series. “In the dream I kept being kidnapped, then I’d find myself in front of a farmhouse with my family. The sky was dark and I was holding a black egg that was slowly opening.” The kind of dream that would have delighted David Lynch, we agree. “The next book on my list is psychological horror too,” she continues. “It’s called A Short Stay in Hell, by Steven L. Peck, and it was chosen by my book club. I’m very curious, the novels I usually read vary quite a lot.” Case in point: her favourite author is Colleen Hoover, the queen of romance and Young Adult fiction (author of It Ends with Us, from which the much-discussed film starring Blake Lively was adapted). “I can’t help it,” she says, amused. “I love first teenage loves, there’s something pure about them. I’ve read all of Hoover’s novels, one after another. Now I’ve moved on to Chloe Walsh and Binding 13, but the genre is the same.” She discovered her passion for reading one day by chance, killing time in an airport (“I never read in school, they even tested me for dyslexia”). Mona now never travels without at least one book.