LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the world’s largest maker of luxury goods, seems to be having an inspirational spring shopping time.

Just one week after sealing the deal to acquire Italian jewelry house Bulgari, LVMH joins the race for the celebrities’ shoemaker, Jimmy Choo.

As Sunday Times reported this weekend, the shoe brand, founded by Tamara Mellon, could be sold for as much as $804 million.

Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, and Burberry are testing the Chinese microblogging service Weibo to research their most promising market of the future from the inside.

The platform, which grows at 10 million users per month, has been attracting an elite of Western luxe brands over the past month, testing ideas for campaigns or other projects directly on their Chinese audience.

“You can immediately see how the market and your following will respond to something if you want to do research” said Leaf Greener, fashion editor of Elle China.

The tastes of China’s wealthy are shifting away from designer goods with flashy logos to more understated luxury brands, the chief executive of French fashion house Chloe said Friday.

That shift has helped Chloe become one of the Swiss luxury goods company Richemont Group‘s fastest-growing labels in China, its CEO said.

“China has been very fast at picking up the most well-known brands,” Geoffroy de la Bourdonnaye said in a group interview.

According to a Women’s Wear Daily report, young Japanese shoppers are less impressed by designer brands and more value-driven than their parents.

The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. already reported last July that “almost 30 percent of shoppers under 30 in Japan named price as the most important factor they consider when shopping, compared to just 21 percent for those over age 50″.

As a result of its economic collapse, Japan’s per-head spending has radically declined — a trend that will continue — with the luxury market being particularly affected, having shrunk by 23 percent between 2006 and 2010.

China will be the world’s biggest luxury goods market by 2020 as its economy booms and an emerging middle class spends a growing chunk of their cash on high-end items.

Over the next decade, Chinese consumers — including a surging number of billionaires — will account for 44 percent of global spending on goods such as bags, vehicles, watches, shoes and clothes, the report by brokerage CLSA said.

The nation’s luxury goods sector was worth $25 billion in 2009, or about 10% of the world market, including purchases by consumers in HK, Macau and Taiwan.

Luxury-brand awareness is growing among China’s super rich, who recognize 20% more of the lavish brands than they did last year, according to the Hurun Report.

The 2011 Best of The Best Survey, which interviewed 401 Chinese mainland millionaires, each with assets of more than 10 million yuan ($1.5 million), said the super rich in China are developing more sophisticated tastes in luxury products.

“Chinese entrepreneurs are getting more and more sophisticated, discerning and confident in their personal style, and what they aspire to, as they try to turn new money into old money,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of the Hurun Report.