The 1940s look also pinpoints the defiant glamour of Paris during the occupation. Those wartime clothes — the strict, tailored jackets or floral dresses, set off with whimsical hats, scarlet lips and shoes made from any material other than rationed leather — represent to the French the “R word”: Résistance. But a new exhibition tucked away behind the Gare Montparnasse in Paris suggests something more intriguing. That it is R for recession that brings out utilitarian elegance and creative ingenuity that we are again experiencing in 2009.