Fashion has been suffering from a case of the Debbie Downers recently (economy blues strike again, boo hiss!), with a lot of the spring collections looking a little under the weather or at least distinctly wet-weekendish in the color department. When Junya Watanabe showed his spring women's wear collection this week in Paris, it was as if the clouds had parted to let in some well deserved sunshine with a full-on parade of African-inspired print dresses skipping down the runway. What's extra smile-inducing about the prints are the cheeky details—if you look closely there are actually curious body parts thrown in to the print, like eyes, ears and lips, and it makes the homage to African textiles all the more Watanabian. Both Watanabe and his mentor Rei Kawakubo, the founder of Comme des Garçons, have always favored amazing draping techniques and this new collection is definitely no exception. It's also kind of awesome and intriguing to see African draping techniques through a Japanese lens, a continent that too often gets bumped off the fashion map.