By RUTH LA FERLA

In earlier eras, film and fashion enjoyed a relationship so intertwined as to border on incestuous. Today, some style-world insiders believe that the long and fabled love affair has lost its heat.

Movies and fashion? “I don’t think there’s a connection,’’ said Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys New York. Despite the cultural frenzy surrounding fashion in the last decades, “it’s very rare,’’ Mr. Doonan said, to find real fashion in the movies or, more tellingly, to see current films that “create much of an impact on the world of style.’’

A generation ago, Mr. Doonan would have had to acknowledge an influence so powerful it drove merchants and garment makers to rush line-for-line knockoffs into production.

Faye Dunaway’s Depression-era glamour girl in “Bonnie and Clyde’’ (1967) spawned a raft of slinky midiskirts, twin sets and jaunty berets like those that lent her character a vixenish appeal. Diane Keaton’s tomboy regalia in “Annie Hall’’ (1977) prompted legions of fans to adopt Ms. Keaton’s signature tweeds, khaki trousers and slouchy fedoras. Since the release of “Out of Africa’’ in 1985, the ivory-tone hacking jacket and khaki safari looks that Meryl Streep wore on the savannah have been a theme on Ralph Lauren’s runway. Not to leave out John Travolta in his white disco suit in “Saturday Night Fever’’ (1977).

But in the ‘60s and ‘70s, only a handful of trendsetting stars - the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Ms. Dunaway and Ali MacGraw - were idolized by moviegoers. “We didn’t have tweeters, bloggers and legions of minor celebrities to challenge their influence,’’ said Andre Leon Talley, Vogue’s editor at large. Today the impact of Ms. MacGraw’s sophisticated preppie in “Love Story’’ (1970) would likely be lost in the flurry of outsize personalities flaunting their wardrobes on the concert stage and television, and on popular blog sites like The Sartorialist, which routinely anoints raffishly garbed young urbanites as the latest arbiters of taste.

“These days the inspiration of film on fashion is never very apparent,’’ Mr. Doonan said. “You might tell yourself, I want a leather jacket like Marlon Brando wore in ‘The Wild One’ or a woolly hat like Ali MacGraw’s in ‘Love Story.’ ‘’ Films retain their emotional impact on viewers, he acknowledged. “But what those viewers take away is often a single wardrobe item, a talisman. It’s like they’re getting a holy relic.’’

The influence that film wields now is often oblique, registering as no more than an impression, a color or mood. In his spring 2007 collection, Marc Jacobs acknowledged “Marie Antoinette’’ and his friend, its director Sofia Coppola. But the feeling of that giddy costume extravaganza came through only in an airy cream and ivory palette and in shapes suggesting trim court breeches and dainty fichu collars.

And “Avatar’’ appears to be influencing designers like Jen Kao and Jean Paul Gaultier, who injected strains of its Edenic imagery into his couture collection in January.

In previous decades the symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and Seventh Avenue was largely the product of strenuous marketing. Stores rushed to reproduce memorable costumes like the pouf-shouldered organdy gown Gilbert Adrian designed for Joan Crawford in “Letty Lynton’’ (1932) .

“Fashion and film used to feed off each other,’’ said Eugenia Paulicelli, the curator of “Fashion + Film: The 1960s Revisited,’’ which opens at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York on March 12. “Paris in that period may have been the center of chic,’’ Ms. Paulicelli said, “but Hollywood, too, became a fashion capital.’’

In the last decade, the once-unchallenged role of movies in shaping public tastes has been largely usurped by television and the concert stage. But to fashion insiders film remains a rich and constant reference point.

“What film can do better than almost anything else,’’ said Ms. Paulicelli, “is establish a powerful intimacy with viewers’ gaze.’’