My first ever fragrance experience (that I remember fondly), was with a teeny bottle of single note African Violet that for a five year old felt very grown-up! That bottle was my prize possession, and my mothers saving grace, from having her daughter constantly raiding her equally prized perfume collection. Over the years my tastes have understandably evolved in sophistication, but I never lost my love of greedily tearing open fragrance strips in my monthly glossies with a kind of juvenile glee, so I could send myself into olfactory heaven with the new this or latest that. Mono.Kultur takes the concept of embedded scent on paper to a whole new level with the latest issue mono.kultur #23, featuring Norwegian scent artist and scientist Sissel Tolaas. The magazine contains no imagery whatsoever, but instead clears the pages for 12 scents that are literally printed into the magazine using a special process called microencapsultation. With a spin on the notion of scratch n’ sniff, you rub the paper to release the narrative allowing the fragrance to tell the story that words would have otherwise. Pursuing a forensics of identity through the language of odor, every morning Tolaas trains in her archive of over 6,730 molecules as one might do yoga or read the newspaper, spending several hours to educate and keep her nose limber. With that kind of obsession & passion for her craft, I wonder what tales those twelve pages tell. Writer :: Emma Pezzack – www.futurenatural.com: the best organic beauty products in the world.