How luxury knitwear brand St. John is reinventing itself under Chinese ownership, and pivoting from

The brand, through its marketing and merchandising, conveyed power and prestige. Hillary Clinton and journalist Diane Sawyer were fans, as were the socialites of Park Avenue in New York and Beverly Hills in Los Angeles.

St. John had modest origins – it came into being in 1962 when Marie Gray made a dress in the garage of their home and persuaded Robert, her then-fiancé, to show it to a store buyer. By the 2000s, it had become a global brand, employing more than 4,000 people and ringing up some US$365 million in sales. It’s had various investors and owners (including German fashion powerhouse Escada).

Eventually, the Grays left the company; Robert died in 2012, while Marie and Kelly now helm a brand called Grayse.

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Now change is afoot again. There is a new creative director. New stores are opening. A debut capsule collection has been launched under a new label.

The China-based owner of the brand concedes that the luxury retail market has shifted substantially. “We are trying to refresh and modernise St. John,” says Joann Cheng, chairwoman of Fosun Fashion Group, which became the majority shareholder of St. John in 2017. “But we are also keeping the authenticity of it.”In October 2019, St. John hired Zoe Turner as its new creative director; Turner arrived with considerable pedigree, having previously worked under both John Galliano and Raf Simons at Dior, alongside Alberta Ferretti and then consulting for Max Mara.

With St. John, she hit the ground running, creating a capsule collection encompassing 20 looks that draw on St. John’s knit heritage yet spun in a refreshingly modern way: a cropped ribbed cashmere jumper with a high polo neck and elongated sleeves, a voluminous cashmere coat in fuchsia, a slinky black cocktail dress with a delicately fluted skirt and daring midriff cut-out.

The capsule collection precedes Turner’s debut full collection for St. John, which will be unveiled for autumn 2020.

“It carries the DNA of St. John using an upgraded knitting technology,” says Cheng. “The new look pushes the boundaries, but you can feel the luxury in it.”

Cheng knows that appointing a new creative director and launching a modernist capsule collection is just one step on the road to reinvention and making a legacy brand relevant again. She and her team are focusing on what St. John does best – its knits.

“The DNA of the company is in the knitwear field,” says Cheng. “We want to make our customers feel that this is the way they want to dress today.”

Still, analysts say that brand makeovers are just the start.

“There are fundamental headwinds that make it about more than just figuring out a new style or look,” says Allen Adamson, adjunct professor at New York University Stern School of Business and co-founder of brand strategy firm Metaforce. “Typically, when a brand loses its appeal, it’s often not just one thing that’s missing but a convergence of many things breaking down.”

Adamson says brands like St. John, whose original aesthetic was predicated on a specific corporate/formal look, are now finding that that raison d’être has dissipated.

“Today, dressing for success is no longer a driving force for women,” he said. “There are more women working from home or who have embraced the casual dress trend even at traditional companies such as bank and law firms. More and more people in those organisations are no longer wearing stylish suits. They’re in Lululemon workout clothes.”

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Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when St. John was ascending into a powerhouse brand, women “were starting to enter the business world and break the glass ceiling and made a conscious decision to look really professional and buttoned up”, says Adamson.

“St. John benefited from that. They were catering to the first generation of working women who were gravitating towards power dressing as they made their way in the corporate workplace.”

But corporate dress requirements have loosened, and women now perform multiple roles; the idea of the ladies-who-lunch socialite set feels oddly archaic.

“That whole idea of women shopping and having lunch at the club … it’s not as relevant today,” says Adamson. “Everyone has got time-crunched and everyone is multitasking. Women are more involved in their children’s lives than their parents were, and would rather be at their kids’ football practice and piano lessons. That’s another one of those fundamental market shifts.”

That Asia continues to be a driving force for the brand is not surprising to Adamson.

“The degree and type of change happening in markets is not consistent globally,” he says. “Some brands might be losing ground in Los Angeles and Chicago but might still have vitality in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City. But we’re all moving in the same direction. We’re all looking at the same images.”

Remaining current is a monumental challenge in an industry that flips constantly to reflect how consumers live, shop and dress or who they follow on social media. But industry experts say that as long as brands have a long-term vision and have the capacity to be nimble, they can morph into the next hot thing while still being considered a heritage brand.

“Prestige fashion brands have the ability to reinvent constantly,” says Humphrey Ho, managing director of the North American branch of Hylink Digital Solutions, an international advertising agency headquartered in China. “Look at Burberry. Look at Estée Lauder. Both focus on innovation, test and learn, cater to consumer product tastes [and have] solid marketing.”

Ho says the key to success for established brands lies in not being “unicorns” or “revolutionaries”. “They don't pump and dump their brands. They’re in it to serve the woman to make themselves feel more confident, move up, address a need.” These companies, says Ho, “have extreme corporate discipline”.

Today, China remains St. John’s second largest market, and one where it has a “solid VIP customer base”, says Cheng. It’s one of five brands operated by Fosun Fashion Group and the only one that is American. (The holding company also owns Lanvin, Caruso and Tom Tailor.) St. John opened four new stores in China in 2019, including in Shanghai and Beijing.

“We are keeping our footprint in retail, as we need to find a right balance between digital and physical retail,” says Cheng. “In the US, our focus will be more strategic and we will refresh our stores with a new concept instead of opening lots of large new stores. Our retail spaces should reflect the new brand image.”

Ultimately, says Cheng, she’s confident that today’s young women will be able to connect with St. John in the same way that she always has. Shifting tastes aside, people have always loved St John for the same reasons – the knits don’t crease or wrinkle, they hang beautifully on the frame, and they are designed to be worn for, literally, decades.

“I travel a lot and I only carry St. John suits,” Cheng says. “You don’t need to iron them. You pack them, land and pull them out. It’s just so easy to wear.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Luxury knitwear brand looks to future

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