This Thursday, the Camera Nazionale Della Moda Italiana will reveal the calendar for their first-ever Milano Digital Fashion Week. Slated to run from July 14-17, Dolce and Gabbana was first to confirm the unveiling of their spring 2021 menswear collection, set to walk the runway at 5:30 on July 15.

This step-change in digital arrives as a hastened bid to accommodate post-coronavirus health guidelines as social gatherings and recreational travel remain taboo. CNMI president, Carlo Capasa, has told Vogue that the “phygital” course of events will roll out in real time, on a platform created by Microsoft.

Even given the tech shift, the goings remain more art than science. The creativity of participating houses will remain a bastion of the events, as vehicles at their disposal only grow in the digital sphere. Photographs, interviews, accredited webinars, keynote livestreams, digital shows presented to mass, virtual audiences, and traditional shows presented to smaller, physical audiences will translate the beauty of the catwalk to stakeholders tuned in globally.

“Every designer is approaching the challenge in a different way,” said Capasa. “It’s going to be very interesting to see what they do.”

While the pandemic has upended the fashion system and rocked our global economy, a stop-gap in the fashion calendar wouldn’t fare well for the small-businesses who have nearly beat the Darwinian odds of stay-at-home orders. Thus, we’ll see leaner collections, belt-tightening on marketing expenditure, a reshoring of supply chains, and sales the lag behind year-on-year numbers, but the show will go on.

“Fashion Week has lived the way it has for so long because it serviced our needs,” Derek Blasberg, head of fashion and beauty at Youtube, told Vogue early last month. “It’s important to support these brands. We are indebted to the industry for creating content, for engaging our viewers, for offering some escapism at a time when people probably need that more than ever.”