Building on your sensibilities, skills, and knowledge,
pave your own way to becoming the world’s leading
owner and designer of your original brand.

Attaining the ability to “Create”, “Envision”, and “Manage” is essential for fashion designers.

The education goal of our fashion design course is “to nurture designers who can realize new intellectual property values”. After all, what are the abilities to achieve this goal? First, it’s “Create” for creating and molding. Understanding the essence of clothes is the foundation of design. Next, it’s “Envision” to imagine and generate ideas. It helps to transcend your ideas and your designs. Finally, it’s “Manage”- the ability to link up “Create” and “Envision” with considerations from the business viewpoint. In other words, it’s like the engine to realize all your designs as a business. This course aims to foster the three abilities above. The curriculum covers all details from creation to management . Let’s fly up high to the world with as fashion designers the two-year learning foundation in this course.

FASHION SHOW

The Fashion Design Course has nurtured a huge number of awardees in domestic and overseas competitions every year. They are graduates who work in world famous brands or owner designers. The annual graduation show that comes with a careful, strict selection process also at tracts increasingly more attention from the fashion sector as well.

15th BFGU FW: FASHION SHOW

BFGU MAGAZINE

Contains various work created as “Final Research & Collection”. The pictures of each work are taken by professional photographers using professional hair and make-up artists and models, and the magazine is fully edited and produced. This is a full-scale collection of works, and some graduates have been recruited by fashion companies after their work was seen in these pages. BFGU MAGAZINE is released annually on the website. As well as exhibitions and competitions, the magazine is a serious chance to launch your own brand.

BFGU MAGAZINE

Many Prize Winners in Competitions

In the Fashion Design Course, graduates are encouraged, in addition to their assignments, to create their own works and enter competitions hosted by various groups and companies both domestic and overseas. The course has produced five Grand Prize winners of the SO-EN Award (hosted by the BUNKA Publishing Bureau), a special interest to those who learn the fashion design, and also produces multiple prize winners every year.

Participation in the “NEW ENERGY TOKYO” exhibition

Four 2nd-year fashion design majors joined the exhibitions, markets, and media activities of the creation festival “NEW ENERGY TOKYO”. It was a joint exhibition in which approx. 280 brands inside and outside Japan participated and attracted as many as 9,000 visitors in just 4 days. It was indisputably a valuable opportunity for the participating students as their works were evaluated by stylists, buyers, models, factory workers, and many other experts in the fashion industry.

1st year main classes

Basic Research & Collection

Completing 10-15 works started in the previous semester and presenting them as “Completed Production Collection Exhibition”. In order to exhibit in full coordination based on the concept, students are going to learn about presentations, including external elements such as the composition of the stage, venue, lighting, and portfolio.

Nurturing Creativity I

The objective is to acquire modeling ability applicable for individual creations. The course broadens students’ horizons of individual creation through theories and cultivates modeling skills in practical presentat ions. I t includes special lectures conducted by experts in various fields such as design, ar t, business, and culture; outstanding works will be selected for both domestic and international design contests so as to expand students’ horizon of creation.

Product Planning for Designer Brands

Students are able to understand how to plan products from the relationship among the three important elements- design (items), customer (people), and experience value (things), and acquire the ability to visualize brand design and product planning.

2nd year main classes

Final Research & collection

The outcome of the two-year creative activities that students have previously explored individually is summarized in the portfolio of 13 to 18 art works (full coordination) to be reviewed by professional buyers at collection shows and exhibitions. They will also be summarized and published in the “BFGU MAGAZINE” as a visual presentations.

Nurturing Creativity II

The objective of the course is to pursue the possibility of new creation modeling from both unique perspectives and a business perspective. The course aims to develop students’ skills to focus on the research of works incorporating design description, draping, pattern making, and men’s theory/ technical description to reflect the work.

Fashion Design & Society II

The objective of the course is to capture consumers’ consciousness formed by social phenomena and to establish “individual methodologies” to create fashion designs. Students are able to understand that fashion design is connected to social events, and they can acquire creative thinking such as “hypothetical reasoning/ abduction” and “analogical thinking/ analytical thinking”.

The Fashion Design Course offers a wide variety of subjects ranging from practical subjects designed to help students acquire knowledge and skills about fashion to management-related subjects linking design with business. Along with the lectures, students work on a research project with an aim to build their own brands in two years and learn how to give concrete shapes to their own concepts. In the first semesters of the first year and second year, they present their concepts. They will create 13 to 18 items in the first year and 15 to 20 items in the second year.
＊The subjects below may change.

FIRST YEAR SUBJECT

[Required]
• Basic Research & Collection
  Completing 10-15 works started in the previous semester and presenting them as “Completed Production Collection Exhibition”.
• Nurturing Creativity I
  The objective is to acquire modeling ability applicable for individual creations. The course broadens students’ horizons of individual creation through theories and cultivates modeling skills in practical presentations.
• Fashion Design & Society I
  It reveals the relationship between the works of iconic fashion designers and the society of their era so as to stimulate thoughts about how those perspective can be developed in modern times.
• Fashion Business Methods (Practical)
  Establish apparel brands in groups formed from all three courses utilizing knowledge acquired from various courses for constituting simulations of apparel manufacturing wholesalers.
• Presentation (Practical)
  Through the creation of a portfolio, students are going to learn how to visualize the objectives and intention of design, design ideas, as well as the background of product / work production.

[Elective]

• Art & Design
  The objective is to learn about the outline of the transition of art and design in history, and to cultivate the creativity, thinking ability, and analytical ability in modeling and expression through appreciation, work production, and presentation.
• Advanced CAD Fashion Design
  To expand the possibilities of CAD-based designs and the power of expression as a designer.
• Apparel 3DCAD I
  The goal is to become able to perform basic digital operation in the 3D CAD software “CLO Enterprise”.
• Apparel 3DCAD II
  Learning applied operations based on the fundamental operations learnt in “Apparel 3D CAD II” and utilizing all these skills on the practical level.
• Apparel CAD Skills
  Students are able to learn basic knowledge and techniques for understanding clothing design and creating patterns with a focus on basic operations in apparel CAD.
• Apparel Production Management
  Learning how to construct product plans and make appropriate decisions as a designer.
• Apparel & Textiles (Practical)
  Learn the basic knowledge and traditional Japanese dyeing techniques to fuse textiles with creative design expressions.
• Apparel Ergonomics
  Attaining the ability to grasp the conditions, factors, and thus various relationships between body shape and garment design in a systematic manner. Students are learn about the relationship between the human body and patterns in static and dynamic movements.
• Internship Program in Design
  The objective of the course is to pursue individual specialties and deepen students’ understanding of the industry, business flow, and the design profession itself for their future career.
• Sustainable Fashion I
  Learning the basics about sustainability in the fashion industry.
• Sustainable Fashion II
  Students are able to sort out various current issues in the fashion industry, and discover more advanced problems at different stages, as well as solutions and models for future development.
• Materials Theory
  Students are able to understand the fundamental features of materials and textiles in apparel and fashion products.
• Product Planning for Designer Brands
  Students are able to understand how to plan products from the relationship among the three important elements- design (items), customer (people), and experience value (things), and acquire the ability to visualize brand design and product planning.
• Design Development
  The objective of the course is to improve students’ ability to create their own unique “design story” based on the learning of the methods and forms of ideas to design.
• Fashion Illustration
  Through the exploration of unique expressions for student’s individual design themes, ideas, as well as the learning of the expression techniques, students are able to show their own originality.
• Digital Fashion Illustration
  Students are able to understand the composition of apparel items as commercial materials, as well as manufacturing raw materials and processes so as to acquire techniques to create illustrations using graphic software (Illustrator).
• Knitting Patterns & Design
  Through lectures and practices using computer flat knitting machines, students can understand the characteristics of industrial flat knitting and learn the position of knit products in the fashion business.
• Aesthetics
  Get to know various ancient and modern concepts of beauty and artworks for the application to fashion creation.
• AI, Metaverse & Fashion
  Cultivate the foundation for the utilization of AI fashion data and the ability to create a new fashion industry using “Metaverse”.
• Spoken English for Fashion
  The course aims to improve the general English proficiency of students as future creators to fly up high in the international market.
• Fashion & Culture
  The course aims to cultivate students’ ability to plan and strategically build up the commercial value of their works. Students are able to acquire the ability to discuss the contemporary significance and ideological depth of their works/ design.

FINAL YEAR SUBJECT

[Required]
• Nurturing Creativity II
  The course aims to develop students’ skills to focus on the research of works incorporating design description, draping, pattern making, and men’s theory/ technical description to reflect the work.
• Final Research & Collection
  Produce as many as 13 to 18 works and put them into portfolio as the result of the 2-year creation activity.
• Fashion Design & Society II
  The objective of the course is to capture consumers’ consciousness formed by social phenomena and to establish “individual methodologies” to create fashion designs.

[Elective]

• Global Business Management
  The course aims to cultivate students’ ability to formulate global business development plans by understanding the structure and market, along with acquiring practical knowledge with high regional expertise, and trends of fashion business in the world.
• Computerized Knitting
  Through trainings and work production using computer f l at knit ting machines, students are able to understand the features of flat knitting and learn how to design for the fashion industry.
• Intellectual Property Management
  The course focuses on the mechanism of intellectual property protection, especially brand (trademark) and design (Industrial design).
• Launching a Fashion Brand (Practical)
  Students are able to acquire the necessary know-how such as business management and analysis for their business start-up plans with their own original colors.