With the Golden Globes and the SAGs down—and their red-carpet fashions suitably assessed here and here—and the Couture shows, from where many of the awards season’s dresses are plucked, now under way, the tea-leaf reading, rune consulting, and general oracle beseeching for who’ll wear what to the 2010 Academy Awards can begin. Attempting clairvoyance is tricky. Sometimes you’re spot-on (as in the case of Marion Cotillard, who wore the very Dior dress we recommended for her to the Globes); sometimes you’re way off (Carey Mulligan did wear Nina Ricci, but a far heavier, darker option than we’d expected).

But then there’s Kate Hudson. After donning a sixties-style, silvery-white mod minidress for her big number in Nine (left), she seems to be paying tribute to it award show after award show. For the Globes (center), she opted for a bustier-topped confection from Marchesa, which elicited a snarl or two from the blogosphere (“Kate Hudson Determined Not to Run Out of Toilet Paper” sniped one commentator); for the SAGs, an elegant column gown from Pucci, to far better effect (right). Will she go for white once again for the biggest show of them all? Only time will tell. If we could put in a plug, it’d be for one of Lagerfeld’s glittering, silver-encrusted creations from Chanel—less reverent than some of couture’s more traditional offerings, perhaps, but also truer to Nine‘s kicky spirit of go-go sex appeal. But whoever her date may be, we wouldn’t go so far as to recommend Baptiste’s show-closing silver spacesuit. It’s Kate’s night to shine.