Style Evolution: Kate Winslet

With six Oscar nominations -- and an armload of Golden Globes, BAFTA and SAG Awards -- Kate Winslet has been winning acting kudos since she first appeared on screen in 1993's "Heavenly Creatures." Too bad the same couldn't be said for her red-carpet clothes. In the early days, her choices seemed, well, as adrift as the teenage Rose she played in "Titanic." But what a difference a decade makes. These days, Winslet -- who's hoping to snag her first Academy Award for her role as Nazi guard Hanna Schmdit in "The Reader" -- is primped, pulled-together and totally glam, a woman who looked utterly breathtaking last year wearing nothing more than a fur blanket and stilettoes in the pages of Vogue. Her secret stylist, she jokes, is her 8-year-old daughter, Mia. Winslet recently said that Mia urged her not to wear so much black. "I said to her, 'What color do you think I should wear?' And she said, 'Pink.' No, not pink. Anyone over the age of 10 shouldn't wear pink!' " To see Winslet's transformation from cute to confident, click on.

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Hey, Mr. Arnstein, here I aaaaaaaam!...Oh, wait. That was Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl." Sorry, Kate, we hate to, um, rain on your parade, but where did you find that sheer lace pants outfit for the 1996 London premiere of "Sense and Sensibility"? Seems like you were trying just a mite too hard to mimic the daring -- and debatable -- black lace bell bottoms-and-bows number that La Streisand wore when she picked up her 1969 Oscar for "Funny Girl."

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It's hard to believe that Winslet was just 20 when she was nominated for her first Golden Globe for "Sense and Sensibility." Or was she? Though her dewy-skinned face is utterly angelic, the boxy blue pants suit she chose for the 1996 awards ceremony was more Mum than Mmmmmmmm.

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There must be something about first-time Oscar nominations that brings out the inner princess in girls. Who can forget Gwyneth Paltrow's (ill-fitting) pink Ralph Lauren frock in 1999, when she won the best-actress award for "Shakespeare in Love"? Three years earlier, Winslet had her own princess moment, when she snagged her first Academy Award nomination for "Sense and Sensibility." (She lost the best-actress statuette to Mira Sorvino and -- Mia's advice notwithstanding -- packed that pink dress away.)

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These days, no one would dare call Winslet fat, but when she starred opposite Leonardo di Caprio in "Titanic" -- here, they're at the 1998 Golden Globes -- she faced a tidal wave of criticism for her real-woman curves. "As a young girl, I never felt attractive," she said recently. "I was fat and unhappy at times and that kind of thinking stays with you your entire life. There's always going to be a part of me that worries about not looking as slim as other actresses." For the Globes, Winslet's black-lace dress was an update of a "Titanic" dinner costume.

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Hooked on a feeling: For the Oscars in 1998 -- when she was nominated for the second time -- Winslet again played off the "Titanic" theme in a Givenchy by Alexander McQueen gown. Was the ornately embroidered dress meant to show off her curves -- or recycle the ship's upholstery?

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Forgotten faster than Winslet's 1999 film, "Hideous Kinky": the too-short pants, too-long coat and too-sheer top that she wore to the film's New York premiere. (Forgotten, too, may be the man on her arm, director James Threapleton, whom she married in 1998 and divorced three years later.)

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"Holy Smoke!" Actually, that's the title of the love it-or-hate-it Jane Campion film that Winslet starred in in 1999. But the same could be said for Winslet's outfit for a 2000 LA screening, where she mixed leather pants, a disco top and beige patent boots.

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Winslet has said that she gained 50 pounds while she was pregnant with daughter, Mia. But five months after the baby's birth, the actress was curvy and comfortable at the 2001 Screen Actors Guild Awards in a black leather dress that showed off her best assets. She laughingly told an interviewer that one of the benefits of the dress was that, "if it rains, I can just wipe it off."1

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Cold-shoulder. That's what we would have given the over-sheer, under-corseted turtleneck that Winslet wore to the 2002 Evening Standard Film Awards. Thankfully, Winslet, who won a statuette for her role in "Iris," was being judged on her acting, not her dressing.

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