FOR many years I knew only two people who wore clothing by the American manufacturer St. John. The garment they both chose was the St. John knit suit, an ensemble as sacrosanct as a nun's habit.

The first woman was an investment banker who spent three nights a week on an airplane and whose weight pirouetted up and down; the knit suit offered her stretchy solace. The other was an elegant older woman with a fondness for control-top pantyhose who owned more than 25 St. John suits.

This is the face of St. John. Unchanging, immutable, the St. John knit suit is as durable as body armor, its wool and rayon signature Santana knit incapable of wrinkling or running. Politicians like Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton wear it because the line is American made, inuring them to charges of unpatriotic dressing. Ladies who lunch love it because the fabric is flattering and the cut conservative. Executives wear it because you can sleep in a St. John's knit suit and look presentable. In fact you could probably fight a fire, deliver a baby or muck out stalls in a St. John suit.

Even the advertising campaign remained unchanged. For two decades the ads featured the profoundly blond Kelly Gray, the daughter of the company's founders, provocatively posed with a tanned paramour gazing at her adoringly, even smolderingly, and occasionally wearing chaps. Over that 20 years I advanced into something resembling -- I tremble as I write this -- early middle age, but Ms. Gray was untouched by the passage of time, every inch of her body apparently Adobe Photoshopped to a digitized slender-thighed perfection.

Last year the company announced plans to overhaul its image. Ms. Gray resigned, along with her mother, Marie Gray, the company's designer. (She remains on the board.) Angelina Jolie signed on as the new face of St. John, and now a woman with elaborate tattoos who used to wear her husband's blood in a vial around her neck can be seen in the tabloids wearing the knit suits. There are murmurings in the fashion industry that Vera Wang will become the company's new creative director.

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Despite the changes, the stores have yet to be refashioned. The St. John boutique on Fifth Avenue is a pleasant, spacious salon decorated in muted beige and vanilla. Soft, anonymous, anodyne music tinkles in the background. Upstairs I found spring and sport collections, and downstairs evening clothes and the classic knitwear, along with a lounge area for male companions where one can sip bottled water and watch CNBC on a wide-screen television.

A lot of the clothing has been redesigned in a more youthful spirit, but the old war horses are still in abundance. In the sport section I found things that were very much old school St. John, a philosophy that combines conservative dressing with the occasional splash of kicky glamour. Think Palm Springs circa 1982. A bright aqua leather jacket with decorative grommets ($1,295) looked like something a former Vegas showgirl married to the local Cadillac dealer might wear as she approaches her seventh decade to show that she has still Got It.

A brightly colored leather jacket in any collection gives me pause. As did the velour tracksuit, which tops out at $885. If my mother had been shopping with me, she would have wailed, "A velour tracksuit for $900, and you still have to dry-clean it?"

The spring clothes were fluid and light, in fabrics like silk charmeuse and bleached linen. Even though, in my leopard-print trench coat and turquoise knee-high lace-up rubber boots, I did not resemble a St. John customer, the saleswoman could not have been more helpful. I explained to her that I was looking for a knit suit, something conservative but stylish, for business travel.

She was young, and she went about her task with a resignation that nine years of working in the St. John boutique had placed on such delicate shoulders. But there was a hint of anticipation in her voice: she was happy about the changes at the company, she said, and looked forward to the line becoming fresher and younger.

Along with some suit jackets and skirts, I tried on a few other items, newer pieces with an Armaniesque air, like a black sleeveless dress with silver embroidery and beading down the front. In the signature St. John fabric, it had a vintage air about it, and it fit. But I found the knit dense, almost claustrophobic, as if it had been made for people who sit in chilled television studios or boardrooms all day long. Which, of course, it was.

The suits fit, but they made me feel Thatcheresque, not a mood I generally embrace when it comes to sartorial matters. I loved a knit trench coat in black, and the saleswoman passed on the information that all St. John's black knits are made with the same dye, so you can keep adding to your collection as the years pass and not worry about your blacks not matching. Useful information, if you worry about that sort of thing.

A dress in ivory, black and red tweed with a vintage rose-print top and sweetheart neckline was appealing, but at $1,595 it seemed expensive. Maybe you would pay that much for a suit in black, but not for a dress you would not wear frequently.

Other looks were less successful. In a long jacket with mandarin collar and knit pants in black, I resembled Anne Robinson of "The Weakest Link." The St. John knit, I realized, is slightly bulky, designed to camouflage, and younger women don't want to hide behind their clothes. This is the most significant problem that St. John faces. How will the company attract new customers without scaring off loyal knit-suit lovers?

The first part of that problem -- attracting chic younger buyers -- is tricky, but it can be done. Remember Chanel before Karl Lagerfeld, or Gucci before Tom Ford. If Ms. Wang accepts the post, she will have to determine the future of the fabled Santana knit. I can only hope we have seen the last of the tanned men wearing chaps.

St. John 665 Fifth Avenue (53rd Street); (212) 755-5252

ATMOSPHERE -- Hushed. SERVICE -- Good. KEY LOOKS -- Multiple personalities: urban socialite, country club grandmother, fortune-hunting glamazon, secretary of state. PRICES -- Expensive. A long jacket in rayon, wool and metalized polyester with leatherlike trim, $1,445; matching pencil skirt, $650. A wool, rayon and lace cocktail dress, $1,095. A gold-trimmed jacket, $1,345; panel skirt, $405.

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