  For over 25 years it is known that the roll structure of electroconvection
(EC) in the dielectric regime in planarly aligned nematic liquid crystals has,
after a transition to defect chaos, the tendency to form chevron structures. We
show, with the help of a coarse-grained model, that this effect can generally
be expected for systems with spontaneously broken isotropy, that is lifted by a
small external perturbation. The linearized model as well as a nonlinear
extension are compared to simulations of a system of coupled amplitude
equations which generate chevrons out of defect chaos. The mechanism of chevron
formation is similar to the development of Turing patterns in reaction
diffusion systems.
