Katharine Hepburn as fashion icon at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,

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Katherine Hepburn taking a picture in a photo from her scrapbook of her 1955 Old Vic Australian tour. AP Photo/The New York Public Library. By: Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press NEW YORK (AP).- A new exhibition is hailing the fashion sense of Katharine Hepburn, whose trademark khakis and open-collar shirts were decidedly unconventional in the 1930s and 40s, when girdles and stockings were the order of the day. The fiercely independent Hepburn famously once said: "Anytime I hear a man say he prefers a woman in a skirt, I say, 'Try one. Try a skirt.'" But skirts and dresses abound in "Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen" at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which opens Thursday. Hepburn, who died in 2003 at age 96, saved almost all the costumes from her long career that included four Oscars and such memorable films as "The Philadelphia Story," ''The African Queen," ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "On Golden Pond." Forty are on view at the exhibition, which runs ... More