Milan's Fashion Week will go ahead in early 2021 with shows likely to continue employing virtual catwalks because of the coronavirus, organizers announced on Wednesday.

While the men's shows will run from January 15 to 19, 2021, women's Fashion Week will be held from February 23 to March 1, 2021, the Italian Chamber of Fashion announced. 

The fashion shows "will become more digital or more physical, depending on the evolution of the pandemic," chamber president Carlo Capasa told the Pambianco Summit, a conference for the fashion industry.

Fashion is Italy's second-largest manufacturing industry and has been hard hit by the global pandemic. 

Fashion houses have had to rethink their marketing strategies and boost their digital offerings, and event organizers have been forced to innovate.  

Milan's last fashion week in September, in which 156 collections were presented between online presentations and physical fashion shows, resulted in some 45 million views, Capasa said. 

"This has been an Italian resilience operation," he said, adding that organizers "hope to be able to return soon to the moments of physical encounters." 

According to a survey by Confindustria Moda, the sector's main employers' group, the Italian industry lost 29 billion euros ($34 billion) in global revenue in the first nine months of 2020.