It takes more than a little rain to shut down the party on The Avenue of Fashion!

The 2013 Detroit Design Festival held forth throughout last weekend, with the the official kickoff party on Tuesday, September 17 at the College for Creative Studies, and a full bill of more than 60 “happenings” and innumerable events taking place subsequently throughout the week, from September 18-22.

A roving puppet theater that performed in different locations all weekend, including Belle Isle and Cass Ave.

“Ghost Jungle” at 19331 Livernois Ave.

Institutions large and small were in on the action, from the DFT to small local business within the Cass Creative Corridor, such as Ocelot Print Shop. Each day of the festival had activities, performances, parties and installations centered around a different part of town. Saturday featured usual suspects and fresh faces around the Cass “Creative” Corridor, but Friday’s focus was on the “Avenue of Fashion”—Livernois between McNichols and Eight Mile—in an all-day-into-night affair called “Light Up Livernois.”

Live performance: Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic Black as Ink Living Paintings at 19329 Livernois.

Light it up they did, through a light rain that did nothing to deter a traffic-stopping turnout for the collaborative effort of art galleries and local businesses. Though the DDF celebrated those aspects that have long-established this section of Livernois as a fashion enclave—African fabric outlets, exquisitely skilled tailors, and menswear specialists—there is a wave of energy coming to the street in the form of new art galleries, murals, social venues and fiber stores.

Detroit Fiber Works, a new addition to the strip and a welcome resource and venue for fiber artists.

Installation by artist Cristin Richard, whose work is related to body and identity. Models wear skin dresses composed from hog intestines, dyed to match their specific skin color.

Much respect to the DDF for pushing the boundaries this year, and taking the festival energy off the beaten path, to help design devotees discover ever more aspects of a city where inspiration is looming up every avenue.