Abstract
The innovation of design is rooted in culture. In the multi-cultural environment, the college students of apparel fashion design major will get a lot of opportunities to expand their personal perspective of thinking, so as to produce innovative ideas in the process of interaction. Cultural intelligence and innovation ability are closely related in the environment of cultural diversity. Through confirmatory factor analysis and regression analysis on the questionnaire data of cultural intelligence and innovation ability of the students, this paper supports the hypothesis that cultural intelligence has a positive impact on innovation ability. The improvement of cultural intelligence can help students better understand culture, and enhance the abilities of cognition, communication and innovation. The paper also discussed training methods for improving cultural intelligence in the teaching of apparel fashion design.