And yet they only shot one scene in the Hôtel de Crillon. Jonas Wergeland had persuaded the beautiful top model from the 1977 show, Else Kallevig, to walk about alone among the tables, looking as if she were remembering that all-important show of a decade earlier and wearing one of the creations from that time; so there she was, slowly weaving her way around the palatial room, twenty-eight years old now, as dazzlingly elegant as ever, in wide-legged black silk trousers and a short, figure-hugging top with long sleeves in red silk overlaid with transparent black lace, and a large black bow in her hair — except that Jonas showed the scene in black and white, with the occasional shot of Per Spook’s hand sketching this very model, a clip that was run backwards once the sketch was completed, to the point where it disappeared, an effect intended to illustrate how quickly fashion dates, how ephemeral it is, like the arrangement on a plate of a haute-cuisine masterpiece or the scent of a perfume, although Jonas also wanted to show that in all good fashion, even a bygone design, there is a cut, a line, a combination of colour and pattern that nevertheless elicits a gasp of appreciation, an indefinable something; and if there was one thing this scene captured — Else Kallevig in a pretty dramatic creation something over ten years old, wafting dreamily across timeless marble, under timeless crystal — it was beauty, it was like being confronted by a fine abstract painting, and it provided Jonas Wergeland, in one brief aside, with his opening remark that fashion could be described only in mystical terms. ‘Fashion is an angel passing over, a glimpse of a wing in the air, then it is gone,’ Jonas Wergeland said, sitting in front of a mirror in which the shadow of Else Kallevig could be seen disappearing out of the room.
The undoubted stroke of genius with this programme was to move the whole fashion show out-of-doors, into Paris’s famed exterior locations, in part because Jonas Wergeland could not face all of the practical problems involved in using the Hôtel de Crillon: they had had a hard enough job getting permission to shoot the outdoor scenes. The main bulk of the programme was, therefore, given over to showing Spook’s clothes and the styles of the day, which is to say the year of filming, in their natural setting: a long series of shots in which leggy Norwegian girls, dressed in Per Spook creations, swept across the Trocadero, strode like goddesses across the Rue de Royale outside La Madeleine, posed like works of art in the square at the Louvre or sailed, filled with Norwegian pride, across the Pont au Double, almost over-shadowing Notre Dame. In between-times Per Spook could be seen behind the scenes, surrounded by the dresser, the hairdresser and the makeup artist: Per Spook in jacket and bow-tie, feverishly meticulous, checking that everything sat as it should or tying a belt in a particular way. Jonas had held off filming the evening dresses until darkness fell then sent lovely girls gliding across the front of the Opera and Sacre Coeur in Per Spook’s ball-gowns so that all the floodlights seemed to be there as much for the benefit of the clothes. One scene especially, in which the mannequins veritably danced around in front of the Arc de Triomphe, made a great many viewers feel like children again, reminding them of the time when they had watched, hearts swelling, as Cinderella whirled round the dance floor with her prince in her gorgeous ball-gown. The soundtrack was equally effusive: Kirsten Flagstad singing an aria from The Valkyrie which conspired with the shots of the Arc de Triomphe to give the impression of a victory of sorts, or the founding of an empire. Jonas Wergeland rounded off the programme — anachronistically but aptly — with Else Kallevig in what was absolutely the world’s most stylish Norwegian knitted cardigan, a luxurious variation shot with glittering silver lurex, and a matching skullcap: the very image of Norway transformed into sheer Champs Élysées, a shot which Jonas froze, whereupon Per Spook’s world-renowned, signature logo was written across it, before they resorted to the standard cinematic ploy of showing the French newspapers from the following day, which is to say in 1977, with France-Soir for one giving Per Spook’s show glowing front-page headlines, leaving no one in any doubt: a Norwegian — Norwegian! — king of fashion had been born.
Then came Jonas Wergeland’s big scoop. Using all of his charm, he had persuaded a number of famous Frenchwomen to give their comments on Per Spook’s clothes. Jeanne Moreau, whom Jonas vaguely remembered from the film Jules et Jim, came on to talk about Spook the master of colour, not only his favourite black and contrasting black and white but also the muted range of natural tones he juggled with so skilfully. The Greek singer Nana Mouskouri — the one with the glasses — spoke in her turn of what a revolution it had been when Spook brought back loose flowing garments, and of the wonderful way in which the clothes draped over one another, layer upon layer. Because Per Spook did not create clothes for baby dolls or clotheshorses, she said, but for real live women, women who travelled and who were looking for comfortable natural clothes: clothes you could move about in. In conclusion, film and television star Marie-Christine Barrault pointed out how different Per Spook was from other fashion designers. One just had to look at how he had sent his models down the catwalk in flat shoes, thereby introducing into fashion a more natural way of walking: that in itself was a milestone, she felt, while also remarking that there was something Nordic about his clothes, something pure and austere, perhaps even naïve, in the lines, the cut and the colours, and not least in the choice of soft warm fabrics. His clothes were tender, not aggressive, she said.
The basic problem was, of course, that Per Spook was a living person, so Jonas Wergeland had a long talk with this honourable ascetic countryman of his, who willingly agreed to let Jonas stick to his overall concept, thus allowing the same actor who had portrayed the other male Norwegian heroes in the Thinking Big series to play him, too. This proved to be no problem for Normann Vaage: he put on the horn-rimmed glasses and all at once he was Per Spook: inscrutable as any Chinaman, a man who kept his own counsel and his thoughts to himself, but at the same time an incorrigible early riser and workaholic with a fondness for Mozart and long walks in the mountains — even Spook was bowled over by his performance.
If I were to add anything to this, I would say that, despite Jonas Wergeland’s fanfare of a programme, I do not believe the people of Norway have really grasped the full extent of Per Spook’s achievement. If anyone had said, back in the sixties that a lad from Thereses gate in Oslo would end up by being a celebrity in Paris, winning both the Golden Needle and the Golden Thimble, the Oscar of the fashion world, it would have seemed as likely as anyone stating that a Norwegian would be the first man on the moon. I doubt, too, whether anyone realizes, in this climate of dogmatic feminism, what Per Spook has done for the woman of today: that he actually played his part in her liberation by giving thought to a new kind of lifestyle and designing clothes for active, self-assured career women, that he dared to introduce into the world of high fashion, where needless extravagance reigns supreme and fashion is regarded as sheer pleasure and indulgence, a touch of integrity, a moral statement concerning the comfort and well-being of women, a dash of ethics amidst all the airy-fairy aesthetics. And yet, as Per Spook himself was at pains to stress, fashion is and will always be an elusive quantity, a fly-by-night, an art form that is constantly dependent on change — and that is perhaps the hardest part to understand: that a member of a nation that is generally two steps behind everyone else and at best tends to win the gold in events at which they have always excelled should be down there in Paris, using all his creativity to conquer something new, to catch on to the spirit of a new age: a line, a cut, a pattern, a colour. Looked at in those terms, Per Spook is one of the very few Norwegians who has been, and still is, ahead of his time.