Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology is China’s premiere educational facility associated with fashion, mainly specializing in art and technology.    Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology (BIFT) is China’s premiere educational facility associated with fashion, mainly specializing in art and technology. With defining characteristics, BIFT is a full-time higher education institution where art, technology, economics, management and other convergent disciplines can successfully interact. Founded in 1959, the institute was first affiliated with the Ministry of Textiles. Then it evolved into a supervisory institution under the City of Beijing in 1998.
In recent years, the institute’s motto has been “innovation paves the way for realistic and creative applications in education”, and this visionary administrative philosophy gives the institute its special academic flavor. BIFT combines art education and engineering education with sound business administration, integrates ethnic fashion culture with contemporary design philosophy, and realizes theory in practice. The institute, which has 7000 students and 700 academic staff, is now made up of five schools (School of Clothing Art and Business, School of Art and Design, School of Materials Science and Engineering, School of Business, and School of Industrial Design and Information Engineering); two departments (Foreign Language Department and the Department of Plastic Arts); two teaching divisions (Division of Social Science and Division of Basic Courses); an educational center (Center for Computer Science Teaching); an International College; a School f Continuing Education; a Department of Higher Vocational Education and a Graduate School. There are 20 basic undergraduate specializations, 1 first-grade master discipline, 11 second-grade master disciplines, 1 second-Bachelor’s degree specialization and 4 double-major specializations in BIFT. The institution has 1 Beijing Key Construction First-grade Discipline (Textile Science and Engineering), 3 Beijing Key Construction Second-grade Disciplines (Design Art, Art Studies and Materials Science), 3 city-level scientific research institutes (Beijing City Fashion Materials R & D and Evaluation Laboratory, Capital Fashion Culture and Apparel Industry Research Site, Clothing Technological Transfer Center – Beijing Division) and an Ethnic Costume Museum, which is one of the ten best specialized museums in China.

The institute continues to stress basic undergraduate education and actively develop graduate, international and continuing education programs to form a unified multi-level organizational structure. Especially, since the Ministry of Education implemented Higher Education Quality Project, the institute has been firmly adhering to the Scientific Concept of Development, continuously furthering reform in education and teaching, and steadily promoting its all-round capacity of running the institute and its social influence as well. At present, BIFT has one national characteristic specialty (Art Design); four Beijing characteristic specialties (Art Design, Fashion Design and Engineering, Polymer Material and Engineering and Industrial Design); two Beijing exquisite courses (Fashion Art Design and Chinese Clothing History); six Beijing exquisite textbooks of higher education(Fashion Art Design, Pattern Making Theory and Technology - men’s and women’s etc.); two Beijing excellent teaching teams (the teaching team of the combination of art in textile design and industry in textile materials, and the teaching team of Fashion Design and Marketing Management); two Beijing Teaching Masters; one Beijing Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center (Fashion Materials and Engineering Experimental Teaching Center); and one Beijing Off-campus Talents Cultivation Base (BIFT•Aimer Off-campus Talents Cultivation Base for Fashion Specialties). The academic staff members of BIFT have finished the New Century Higher Education Teaching Reform Project, an English teaching reform project of the Ministry of Education and other teaching reform projects of Beijing, and have won a number of excellent teaching achievements awards at national, ministerial and city levels. In addition, they have conducted 19 National Planning Textbooks and published 33 textbooks of clothing, painting and art series, of which such characteristic textbooks as Clothing Plate Making have been reprinted many times and broadly used by similar specialties in other colleges and universities around China.