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At least, that's what the Swedish fashion retailer would like you to think, given the massive party it threw last night at the Pudong Science and Technology Museum, which included a brief appearance by Aussie pop queen Kylie Minogue. It's clear that expansion into Asia, specifically China, is high on H&M's priority list, so their media machine can be forgiven for grand pronouncements like "Asia is about to change" that show up in our local rags.

Shanghaiist somehow conned some tickets to last night's event. We were impressed with the huge choir of young girls parked at the entrance, swaying back and forth and singing some of Kylie's big hits. The singer, flanked by about a hundred young ones robotically gyrating in unison to the beat, popped up around 10 pm for a 7 minute performance capped by a fireworks display and plenty of shiny happy fluttery things. We ended up with a nice buzz, some blurry pictures, and a garish gift beach towel.

The official H&M website doesn't yet have details on the Shanghai stores, but we can tell you again that the first one opened today at 11am in in the old Benetton building at 651 Huaihai Zhong Lu. Preliminary reports from fashion maven Peijin Chen as of the writing of this is that the line to get in is about a block long. Luckily, we have our beach towel to hold us over until things get a little less rowdy.

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Photos by Tim Beckenham, president of the Kylie Minogue Fan Club.