The first and only professional graduate school of fashion in Japan, Bunka Fashion Graduate University (BFGU) provides the education for the fashion industry from the perspective of the fashion business.
Bunka Gakuen
Educational Foundation Bunka Gakuen has played a leading role at the core of in Japan’s fashion education for hundred years since its establishment in 1919.
It has a wide scope of developmental activities for tertiary education in its history, which includes a title change to “Bunka Fashion College” in 1936, establishment of Bunka Gakuen University (formerly Bunka Women’s University) in 1964, completion of the new campus with skyscrapers in 1998 and establishment of Bunka Fashion Business School in 2003.
Besides nurturing capable persons for our next generation, it also proactively promotes publication, cultural and research activities, including the issue of “Soen” and “Mrs” magazines and international collaborative activities with various cities in the world. Furthermore, it also enthusiastically releases fruitful information and provides solid educational materials though its library, Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum and Bunka Fashion Resource Center, with useful clothes-related information from its five associated research institutes.
Bunka Fashion Graduate University is based on the foundation of all these historical events and activities. In 2003, Bunka Fashion Business School elaborately developed a professional graduate school and in 2006.
Bunka Fashion Graduate University is established with an aim to systemize a practical and unique curriculum as an improvement of just academic teaching, and thus values of individuals can be fostered for the society. It nurtures real, true fashion business leaders from a different angle of other educational institutes in the fashion industry.
Fashion Design Course
Education in the Fashion Design Course revolves around two pillars: mastering broad knowledge and skills to start a business as an owner/designer and research activities to prepare yourself for starting your own original fashion brand. In other words, the course offers students the opportunity to create designs capable of competing globally, while allowing students to master the means of connecting these designs to business. The five mottos of the Fashion Design Course are: 1) Conduct creative activities based on excellent skills 2) Do not create anything that would be worthless without the brand tag. Create designs that are original and irreplaceable 3) Aim for being number one in the world. 4) The most important factor is to continue, no matter what. 5) Never give up. Keeping these mottos in mind, the graduate students at BFGU are competing with each other to become the world’s leading fashion designers.
Building on your sensibilities, skills, and knowledge, pave your own way to becoming the world’s leading owner and designer of your original brand.
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.
Fashion Design Course Exhibition (2018) by Dashion Design CourseBunka Fashion Graduate University
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. As well as exhibitions and competitions, the magazine is a serious chance to launch your own brand.Since 2012, BFGU MAGAZINE has opened as a website, not on paper.
Fashion Technology Course
The Fashion Technology Course aims “to develop personnel capable of making products out of fashion designs.” In order to commercialize fashion designs, fashion technologists, such as modelists, must have full know ledge of the process, beginning with the planning stages through to production. For this reason, the curriculum of this course is designed on the basis of“practicality,” focusing on fieldwork. Under the professors and lecturers, who have a wide range of experience, and who include corporate technical managers, plant managers or owners of sewing/textile plants, and modelists of famous fashion brands, the students will take advantage of the generous facilities and equipment of the school to acquire the knowledge and skills of fashion production. They will be able to become modelists, pattern makers, fashion product directors, textile planners with full knowledge of the characteristics of the raw materials and the realities of production sites.
With a curriculum emphasizing fieldwork, we aim to nurture students who will be capable of becoming modelists and pattern makers immediately upon graduation.
The Fashion Technology Course offers a curriculum based on actual production sites. A wide variety of technology-focused subjects are available, which teach theories, knowledge and practical skills on the production of fashion products, as well as design subjects and management subjects required to utilize the acquired skills. Students exhibit the research results of “Basic Research & Collection” in the first year and “Final Research & Creation” in the final year, which will include more practical content. The course aims to develop students into work-ready fashion technologists.
Ultrasonic welding equipment (2018) by Fashion Technology CourseBunka Fashion Graduate University
The course introduced ultrasonic welding equipment, a first in the field of education.
Fashion Business Administration Course
The Fashion Business Administration Course nurtures entrepreneurs, business administrators, and producers capable of leading in the global fashion business sector. The students will first study the basics of the fashion business, followed by such as business management and finance, in parallel with subjects in fashion technology and design. In the second (final) year, the students will study applied corporate management theory and finance,while conducting research on individually selected themes. By the end of the final year, they will have acquired a broad knowledge and the know-how to succeed in all areas of the fashion business. Students will create the basis for succeeding as fashion business leaders. Through two years of research work, they will create the plan for their own brand business.
A fashion business MBA to nurture future entrepreneurs and business administrators.
The Fashion Business Administration Course offers a curriculum that helps students to improve their skills in a phased manner. In the first semester of the first year, students acquire basic theory about the fashion business and deepen their total understanding of the fashion business. In the second semester, they will improve their ability to apply this theory through exercises. In the first semester of the second year, they acquire knowledge of advanced theories and pursue their specialized field. Through off-campus research and graduation research projects, they build more practical proficiencies.
Final Research Project (2018) by Fashion Administration CourseBunka Fashion Graduate University
Each student will select a research theme related to the fashion management field, conduct the survey and research, compile a report and submit it as final research.
Fashion Administration Course Presentation (2018) by Fashion Administration CourseBunka Fashion Graduate University
Final research presentation by Final year students of Fashion Business Administration Course.
Fashion Administration Course (2018) by Fashion Administration CourseBunka Fashion Graduate University
