China is increasingly shedding its drab "Mao's jacket" image of the 1960s to emerge as the international fashion hot spot.
Big names like Louis Vuitton, Prada and Giorgio Armani are opening stores in the country, reports Xinhua.
Fashion industry player UmBernard Arnault said Louis Vuitton are to open 13 stores in the Chinese mainland by the end of this year.
After the opening of a Louis Vuitton flagship store in Shanghai, another one in Beijing is to open later.
Prada is targeting 30 stores in China by 2008.
Giorgio Armani, who opened a store in Shanghai in April, announced plans to star 20 to 30 stores in the mainland by 2008, when the next Olympics will be held in China.
These plans were announced at the "Luxury 2004: the Lure of Asia" conference which ended here Thursday with participants expressing their confidence in the Asia-Pacific region, and in China in particular.
The two-day conference attracted major players in the world fashion industry including UmBernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton; Ferruccio Ferragamo, the CEO of Salvatore Ferragamo; and Christian Blanckaert, the executive vice president of Hermes International.
Dickson Poon, the group executive chairman of Dickson Concepts (International) Ltd, noted that of the company's 390 stores worldwide, 140 were in China.
According to statistics, Asia accounts for 40 percent of the world market for luxury brand sales, followed by America and Europe.
--Indo-Asian News Service