RTW Fall

You've checked out the striped handbags, the floral slip dresses, the cropped culotte pants and flats - just a few of the latest spring fashion trends - but now you've got to pull it all together. Expand your fashion thinking. It's all about new possibilities. Here are some tips for styling your wardrobe this spring:

n Do more with a dress. Wear a dress like a tunic top over skinny pants. This season, look for soft slip dresses that easily fall over leggings or jeans. This layering is one of the hottest trends this season.

Thirty-eight vendors, a diamond ring “cake dive,” and a runway show with the “Hip Hop Cops” as male models are to be featured in the Tribune-Star’s 16th annual Bridal Showcase next March 13 in Hulman Center.

“If you are engaged and planning a wedding, this is like a one-stop shop where you can get information and prices because of the variety of vendors,” said Erin Powell, Tribune-Star advertising director. “We also have wedding planners.”

Everyone has his or her own idea of what a perfect day would be. To Jun Takahashi, on a perfect day — the title of his fall collection of wonderful, perfect imperfection — “nothing happens,” he said backstage.

In the zany fairy-tale realm of the show’s grand, graceful beauties, ranging in age from newly post-pubescent to silver-haired seniors, on the best day anything can happen. It takes you deep into your own world, where you can live and dress as you please. That could mean donning a thorny crown and a shirt printed with golden hair cascading over a painting. Putting on your high-waisted pants made from a mossy green material that looked like fake astrakhan, and pinning a gold watch and mini handbag on the pocket. That was the show’s opening look. It set a fantastically strange baseline on which Takahashi built oddball queens of comfort dressed in cocoon layers of deconstructed knits, fuzzy pajamas, elegant tailoring, egregiously fake fur coats, and cozy, extralong collegiate knit scarves.