Practice Those Pliés

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images (Chanel) and Niko Tavernise, via Fox Searchlight Pictures (Portman). Natalie Portman in a scene from “Black Swan,” flanked by looks from Chanel for spring.

THE notion that film inspires fashion is one of the style world’s hoariest clichés. But in the case of “Black Swan,” in which Natalie Portman plays an ambition-maddened dancer, that chestnut bears some truth. Darren Aronofsky’s Grand Guignol of a film both reflects — and anticipates — a trend in the making cheap jerseys for sale, its multilayered tutus, feathers and cobwebby knits attesting to a shift in the fashion wind.

The kinky costumes in “Black Swan” were the brainchild of the costume designer Amy Westcott, working with Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte, a label known for its fusion of chastity and chills. The Mulleavy sisters, celebrated for their raw (and often goth-inflected) fabric treatments, conceived a look for Ms. Portman’s dancer in the dark that echoes the movie’s alternating moods of innocence and iniquity.

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“We had an affinity for the subject matter,” Kate Mulleavy said, adding that the film gave her an understanding of the ballet world’s “darker nature and twisted kind of underbelly.”

How better to captivate the fashion flock? As far back as last fall, its more progressive members seemed to have anticipated the lightness, and the creepiness, of the ballet-within-the-film. Cecilia Dean, a trend-setting founder of Visionaire, celebrated Halloween in a ballerina-inspired Gigi Burris feathered headpiece and a vintage Giorgio di Sant’Angelo black feathered bodice.

On the runway, Karl Lagerfeld explored the twin themes of sweetness and perversity in a Chanel spring 2011 ready-to-wear collection infused with plumes and shredded fabrics. A surrealistically avian theme was exploited by Sarah Burton in her debut collection for Alexander McQueen, its severity softened by marabou tufts. A similarly airborne feeling was reflected in a J. Mendel cocktail dress with winglike panels flaring from its hips; in a Club Monaco faux marabou miniskirt; and in the vintage toe shoes enjoying a run at Early Halloween, the vintage shop in Chelsea.

Come spring, a ballet-inspired trend may well extend to every level of the market: Lipsy of London, a line sold a Bloomingdale’s; ASOS, the online boutique; and BCBG Max Azria are all selling tutus, to say nothing of the rehearsal togs and balletic underpinnings that are American Apparel’s stock in trade.

On or off the runways, some froth is refreshing, an archly feminine, and patently escapist, alternative to a season of trouser suits, utility looks and aggressive militaria.

Does this mean that come spring we will see a flurry of tutus and dance-inspired frills rarely seen since Carrie Bradshaw’s girly heyday? Count on it.