Young metropolitans redefine "fashionable"

Results of a recent survey showed that Shanghai has overtaken Hong Kong in the ranking of fashionable cities. This has predictably caused a stir among the fashionable crowds in Hong Kong's hip neighborhoods where young professionals in finance and property gather in the evenings to talk shop over a drink or two.

Never mind who did the survey. It reportedly based the ranking, at least in part, on counting the number of times the words Gucci, Prada or other named brands were mentioned on the Internet.

Details of its methodology are of little interest. But the basis of the ranking has touched on a social trend that is shifting fast among the better-educated young professionals in Shanghai and some other major mainland cities.