Thousands of rich Shanghai residents have turned China’s most cosmopolitan city into the luxury capital of a country that is expected to become the world’s largest market for the sector between 2012 and 2015.

Shanghai topped China’s luxury market in 2010-11 with 18% of overall sales, ahead of Beijing’s 16% and the eastern city of Hangzhou, with its 13% share.

Second and third-tier cities in the country are still far behind, despite boasting a growing number of wealthy people, according to the World Luxury Association.

Luxury retailer Chanel Inc. recently filed a “cyber-piracy” lawsuit against 399 websites, charging them with infringement on it’s trademark and selling counterfeit Chanel items, on the Internet.

The counterfeit items infringed upon include; handbags, shoes, wallets, jewelry, scarfs, sunglasses and clothing bearing the Chanel name.

The suit claims that the websites, specifically, use SEO strategies, using keywords that will more than likely show up in search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Fashion bloggers will help propel online sales of designer clothes, jewels and luxury cars to more than 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in 2015.

The exclusive fashion world has embraced the Internet later than other industries but is catching up quickly.

Brands such as Burberry, Tiffany and Gucci are increasing exposure to social media to connect with a new generation born when mobiles and Internet were already there.

You don’t have to tell the people at Prada how valuable the Chinese market for luxury goods has become — the Italian fashion icon is so keen to set up a base out East that it is about to be listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

In fact, such has been the rush by the world’s luxury brands to get a foothold in China that there are, apparently, little to no spaces left for them in the malls of the country’s largest cities.

Bad news for the brands themselves — keen to get a slice of a market estimated to be now worth 84 billion yuan (nine billion euros) a year — but it is good news for China’s fast-growing number of online luxury-only shopping portals.

As the buying power of China’s masses continues to spiral upwards, more and more information is being gathered focusing not only on what they like to spend their money on but how they go about spending it.

This week it has been the turn of the international audit and advisory services firm KPMG to release its report into the spending habits of mainland Chinese.

It found that 70 percent of the country’s consumers of luxury brands search the internet each month before making their purchases. What’s more, 30 percent claimed they searched online for information on luxury items each week.

According to local and international media, Tokyo‘s fashion business is gradually getting back to usual.

After the earthquake hit Japan on March 11, many brands including Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Cartier acted to bring some of their executive staff back to their home countries and closed local boutiques.

News outlets including WWD and Racked now confirm that on March 22, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior, Chanel, and Forever 21 reopened their doors in the capital.