LOS ANGELES — The knitwear empire Marie Gray built under the St. John label, starting 43 years ago, will enter its next phase as an American luxury brand without her or her daughter, creative director and longtime face of the brand Kelly Gray.
Marie and Kelly Gray disclosed Monday that they will no longer be involved in daily operations with the Irvine, Calif.-based company, but will assume roles on its board and as a consultant, respectively. The Gray family remains a minority stockholder in the company, 83 percent of which was sold to Vestar Capital for $520 million in 1999.
The news comes on the heels of a newly revamped $5 million billboard and print campaign, the first in 22 years not to feature Kelly Gray, who starred in the company’s now-iconic ads, typically with an attendant chorus of hungry-looking male models. The new ads feature Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
Announced internally Monday to the company’s 4,000-plus employees, the news confirms reports this spring in WWD that the two would be stepping down by September.
Its timing, however, appears to have come as somewhat of a surprise in some corners of the company. But St. John chief executive officer Richard Cohen struck a much more deferential tone when pressed. “I don’t think there was ever a right time. It sort of evolved,” he said late Monday. “I can genuinely say I have nothing but respect for the family, and I only hope we can live up to their legacy and build the company into a global business.”
Neither Marie nor Kelly Gray were available for comment.
Marie Gray, in a statement, said, “We’re grateful to our customers around the globe for their loyalty and support throughout the years.” She then thanked the company’s employees for making “our vision a reality.”
Kelly Gray also wished well the staff past and present in the same statement, adding: “I’m extremely proud of what we, as a family, have accomplished in the fashion industry.”
Their decision to step down is effective immediately.
Co-founder Robert Gray retired in October 2002. Once honorary chairman, his wife is now the only family member on the board.
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Cohen, who joined the company from Zegna in 2004, is restyling St. John’s present and future. His mandate: to reposition St. John in the designer category, define it as an American luxury house and, particularly key, attract a younger clientele base.
Changes have become a constant since then. In March, chief operating officer Bruce Fetter and onetime co-president resigned after eight years there. This followed several top appointments at the start of the year: Robert Green as executive vice president, sales and marketing; Max Weinstein, executive vice president, operations, and Elfriede Campbell, executive vice president, human resources.
As for who will replace Marie Gray, who has always overseen design of the six collections annually, the company remained tight-lipped Monday. “The entire team Mrs. Gray and Kelly developed is in place,” said Cohen. He added that an announcement would eventually come as to who would helm that team, but he wouldn’t indicate how soon.
Cohen confirmed that industry veteran Tim Gardner, who has worked as creative director for Calvin Klein and, most recently, Phi, has been consulting for the brand.
As to what extent Kelly Gray’s new consultant’s role will encompass, company sources Monday would not elaborate. Yet, noted Cohen, “Kelly has a tremendous understanding of the brand and we have every intention of tapping into that knowledge. The consultancy will evolve over time. Basically, when we need her, we’ll call her.”
As creative director, Kelly Gray continued the tradition of featuring herself as the St. John woman in a campaign that spanned two decades, ending with this summer’s campaign. The only child of Marie Gray, Kelly came on officially at St. John as a model in 1982. Her parents insisted she try on different roles at the company, earning each step of the corporate ladder. She was promoted to executive vice president-creative director in 1996.
“I would say that I am very much a blend of both my parents,” she told WWD in an earlier interview. “We take pride in being control freaks. It’s not such a bad thing. Because of it, when my parents couldn’t find colors vibrant enough, they decided to start dying their own yarn. Then, when the yarn came in and it was streaky, they decided they had to twist their own. Being in control has always been about a premium product.”
Earlier this year, the news that Kelly Gray signed a new three-year agreement with St. John followed with the announcement that she would be working with the company’s new outside agency, Lipman, in New York. The decision to go with an outside agency, in fact, was a first in the company’s history, and yet another sign of Cohen’s influence in St. John’s evolution.
The St. John story is a classic American tale that could make a Hallmark movie of the week.
St. John was actually a stage name for the Belgrade-born Marie Hermann, who, along with her family, had escaped communist Yugoslavia at the end of World War II for Winnipeg, Canada. In 1955, having accepted a job managing Hollywood’s famous Brown Derby restaurant, Marie’s father moved the family again.
Young Marie became a secretary and fit model at a Los Angeles manufacturer. Although she already had her sights on the Hollywood star factory in the early Sixties, she shared a design for a wool jersey chemise that was then integrated and shown by the manufacturer’s sales team, headed by a serious manager named Robert “Bob” Gray. (He was the only child of a Hollywood stuntman and the daughter of a wealthy Minneapolis railroad executive).
Marie St. John apparently found Gray good looking, but “terribly arrogant,” according to a book the company published in 1998 and written by her sister, Liz Mitchell. The aspiring model left the manufacturer to continue her career, working freelance for Max Factor, Jean Louis and Mr. Blackwell. The 25-year-old also appeared as a hostess on the nationally televised game show “Queen for a Day,” pointing out prizes such as dishwashers and a knitting machine. With her eye on the latter, she contacted the maker and paid a whopping $450 for it.
The pair were eventually engaged. Keen on earning enough money for a honeymoon in Hawaii, she convinced Gray, finally, to show the simple knit dresses she hand-cranked out of her garage to local buyers. Bullocks Wilshire and a local boutique bought 84 dresses that day.
By the time the couple married in 1962, they had five machines and a half-dozen knitters making 100 dresses a week. Having broken the $1 million mark in wholesale sales in 1971, the Grays and their five-year-old daughter relocated lock, stock and dye barrels one hour south to Irvine. (That honeymoon to Hawaii finally happened on their 10th anniversary.)
Over the following four decades, St. John emerged into a full ready-to-wear empire, dressing its devotees from shoes to jewelry to handbags and belts and even fragrance. There is also a home accessories collection, from frames to martini shakers.
The company has operated under several incarnations: As a completely family-owned business, a corporate subsidiary, a publicly traded concern and back to a mostly private hybrid. Its expanding workforce operates dozens of manufacturing facilities and offices around the world, including 32 company-owned boutiques in 28 nations.
In some circles, St. John became a powerhouse brand synonymous with power women who live in the tightly knit suits and gowns known for traveling well and always looking polished. Among them: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Senator Hillary Clinton and celebrity attorney Gloria Allred.
Although the delicate and mannered Mrs. Gray, as she’s known, has often deferred to her husband and appears quiet, the demure image betrays a competitive streak, according to those who know and work with her. About herself, Gray has called it being stubborn, yet her quest to “do it better” marks her overachieving character.
In fact, Marie Gray has relished proclaiming that she has little interest in wooing the fickle fashion media with clothes that real women have no interest in wearing. “We don’t do shows in New York. We don’t get a lot of fashion press,” she said in an earlier interview. “So what? What really excites me is seeing that the customer is loving it — and she’s paying full price.”
And they did shower the Grays with love when hundreds of the brand’s most devoted converged on the Bren Events Center, the hall usually relegated to basketball games and rock concerts, on the campus of University of California at Irvine, for the biannual runway shows presented for buyers from Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, with video cameras set up to tape the whole affair and later show it on monitors at St. John’s point-of-purchase areas.