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For After the Ball, a Cinderella-style fashion film set in Montreal that opened recently, studio designer Mario Davignon collaborated with Le Château to bring a spinoff collection of clothing worn by the characters to stores across the country.

Clothes from Le Château’s in-store collection for the newly released film After the Ball.

Online retailer Mr Porter is doing much the same: It joined forces with Matthew Vaughn, director of the spy thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service starring Colin Firth, to produce a bespoke collection based on the film’s costumes, designed by Arianne Phillips, that includes silk neckties from Drake’s of London, patent-leather dress shoes by George Cleverley and tortoiseshell eyewear by Cutler and Gross.

As it turns out, studio designers have been translating their work for fashion-buying movie fans for decades. Herewith, a brief history of real-world collections spun out of the costume department.

1932: MGM costume designer Gilbert Adrian creates a white organdy tea gown with outsized ruffled sleeves and hem for Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton. According to the designer’s biographer Christian Esquevin, Macy’s “cinema shop” would go on to sell more than 50,000 authorized replicas.

1951: The strapless pale-yellow tulle-and-taffeta gown with blossom-encrusted bosom designed by Edith Head for Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun is produced by an American dress manufacturer. It also gets widely copied by the home-sewing set when patterns based on the frock are released and becomes the defining youthful party-dress silhouette of the decade.

1997: For the 10th anniversary of Withnail & I, the film’s costumer Andrea Galer is commissioned to make a custom replica of the Harris tweed overcoat that actor Richard E. Grant famously galumphed around in. She goes on to make and sell them to the public by special order (and still does today).

2011: H&M teams up with costume designer Trish Summerville during production of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to create a 30-item collection of tough-looking pieces, including distressed combat boots and leather motorcycle leggings, that call to mind the titular loner Lisbeth Salander.

2013: Spike Jonze’s Her is released, depicting a Siri-centric world set in the near future that owes much of its charm (and familiarity) to retro costume details. Studio designer Casey Storm used the film’s high-waisted pants and warm nostalgic palette of orange, yellow and red as a starting point for the quirky spinoff collection she produced for retailer Opening Ceremony.

2014: Three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood, who worked as an assistant department-store buyer before crossing over into film and who is known for her work in movies such as Edward Scissorhands and Chicago, creates a line of subtly medieval-looking dresses and blouses for HSN that loosely evoke the elaborate attire she designed for Snow White & the Huntsman.