We show through explicit molecular modeling how tilt may be induced in layered mesophases and propagate across the layers, using a concrete representation of flexible tail-core-tail calamitic mesogens in conjunction with the variational cluster expansion. The results demonstrate that spontaneous symmetry breaking observed in smectic liquid crystals-the tilt of the director relative to the layers-can be induced by excluded volume interactions, both in the synclinic and in the anticlinic configurations.