Little is unintentional in the highly produced world of Katseye, the global girl group.
The outfits the four members wore last month for their performance at the Disney Legends awards were no exception.
Grecian-inspired, midriff-baring and sexy, the white jersey and silk charmeuse ensembles accented with gold hardware were designed by St John Knits (known to most people as just St John).
The 64-year-old fashion brand based in Anaheim, California, is more likely to be found in the closet of an affluent family matriarch than on a bunch of 20-somethings.
The looks were a strategic tease – St John has a new creative director, Humberto Leon, who is also the creative director of Katseye.
“Were you surprised when you heard?” Leon asked via a video call to talk through his new gig.
The appointment may have been unexpected, but it was not entirely out of character.
Before he started orchestrating the image and visual world of Katseye in 2022, Leon had a long, successful career in fashion and retail built on the alchemy of the unexpected.
He is a co-founder of Opening Ceremony, the New York City store he opened with his best friend, Carol Lim, in 2002.
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The shop in the city's SoHo neighbourhood became a generational cultural happening and hangout as much as a retail concept and brand.
Its predilection for unforeseen collaborations, with people like Chloe Sevigny and Spike Jonze and sleepy brands like Pendleton, is largely responsible for crystallising what is now fashion industry standard practice.
When LVMH tapped Leon and Lim to take over Kenzo in 2011, the once-vibrant label founded by Japanese designer Kenzo Takada in 1970 had lost its pulse.
As its devoted clients aged out, recruiting a younger one was imperative.
By the time Leon and Lim left in 2019, they had repositioned Kenzo as a contemporary brand.
St John is desperate for the same kind of zeitgeisty CPR. Leon was game.
He joined the company four months ago, ending a six-year hiatus from pure fashion during which he opened several restaurants in Los Angeles in addition to cultivating Katseye.
“I love a curveball,” he said. “I love a heritage story.”
St John was founded in 1962 by Marie Gray, a model, and her husband, Robert Gray, a sportswear salesperson.
She knitted her first dress, a simple wool style made on a flatbed knitting machine; he sold it to Bullocks Wilshire, a Los Angeles department store.
Under the Grays’ direction, St John’s crease-free suits, matching sets and gowns made from its proprietary Santana knit attracted a keenly loyal following that drove the label to become the top seller in women’s apparel at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue in the 1990s and early 2000s.
At its height, St John was a thriving public company.
Its wares were an alternative to Chanel, beloved by ladies who lunch, politicians and career women who found the boxy fits and elastic waists to be tasteful and comfortable. But they were not young.
That’s where the trouble started. In 1999, the Grays struck a US$522mil (approximately RM2.1bil) deal with Vestar Capital Partners to take St John private (it is now owned by Lanvin Group).
Within a few years, executives decided the brand needed a face-lift.
The Grays were out. Slick, sultry campaigns featuring Angelina Jolie, shot by Mario Testino, were in. Clothes were cut to reflect a slimmer, more European silhouette.
The loyalists mutinied. Profits fell.
Despite corrective efforts – the Grays returned for a short consulting stint, and Marie Gray, 89, remains on the board to this day, St John continued to decline and revenue was down 10.5% for the first half of 2026.
Leon is the latest in a revolving door of creative directors with the same remit.
“A Brand That Keeps Trying For Cool” was the headline of an article by The New York Times in 2020 when St John hired Zoe Turner, who had a decade of experience under John Galliano and Raf Simons at Dior.
In 2022, Enrico Chiarparin, another veteran designer, took over with celebrity stylist Karla Welch.
Their collections, rooted in nostalgic California glamour of the1960s and 1990s, were fine, but they failed to make an impact.
“I like telling true stories,” Leon said.
In his eyes, St John’s lore hasn’t been done justice.
“I don’t think anybody’s talking about the archives and what Marie Gray did in the way that I’m speaking about it,” he said. “Once you hear it, you’re like, ‘Wait, there was a vision.’”
It’s a story of California and comfort as confidence.
Under Gray, St John spanned ready-to-wear, couture, sport, jewellery and accessories, which Leon is reimagining in one cross-generational wardrobe.
St John’s core customer is in her 40s.
“A lot of our clients are attorneys,” Mandy West, St John’s CEO, said. “They’re in the corporate world. What that looks like today versus 30 years ago is very different.”
Leon’s first collection, a capsule that's available now on the St John website, includes nylon taffeta anoraks, gilets, capri pants, knits and denim. The Santana knit is long gone.
Leon is putting a new idea of knits to the fore with sweaters decorated with statement buttons and sweater pins pulled from the brand’s vast jewellery archive, which he called a “big unlock”.
He’s also reviving the dormant jewellery business with 1980s earrings and crystal necklaces.
“I see it all as opportunity,” he said. “None of this has to be boring.”
Leon’s first campaign features Tina Knowles.
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St John is also a story of mothers and daughters.
Marie and Robert Gray’s daughter, Kelly, held roles at the company as creative director, president and CEO.
More memorably, she was for 22 years the face of the house ad campaigns, seared into the consciousness of the magazine-reading public for their commitment to a campy bit: Kelly Gray, a glistening blonde with a feathered pixie presiding over a pack of beautiful young men.
“The ads were meant to be provocative,” Gray told The Daily Front Row in 2018. “Our line was absolutely not. We dressed lawyers and politician’s wives, but that isn’t very aspirational or fun to look at.”
Gray was striking but not a conventional model.
The fantasy tableaus varied – a Scottish country manor, a desert with bottle-fed baby tigers, a masked ball, but Gray and her boys never changed. Until 2005, when she got bumped for Gisele Bundchen.
Leon is aware that Gray’s image looms large. Y2K is all the rage. Could it be the moment to resurrect that era of St John?
“I think about her all the time,” he said. “She’s on my mood board, so I wouldn’t rule anything out.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
