Amid the global gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Shanghai Fashion Week (SHFW) has gone virtual, putting its fancy roster of over 150 catwalk shows online and engaging hundreds of thousands of viewers through live streaming.

The SHFW, one of the world's top runways, opened Tuesday as planned after its counterparts in Europe were hit by the COVID-19 outbreak, with some even ending abruptly.

The Shanghai-based organizers took a bold step of entirely moving one of the biggest events of China's fashion calendar online in cooperation with China's e-tailing juggernaut Alibaba Group's Taobao and Tmall – the biggest marketplace for livestreaming business, making it world's first entirely livestreamed digital fashion week.

"It only took six weeks from coming up with the proposal to make everything happen," revealed Lyu Xiaolei, SHFW committee's vice secretary.

"It is not only a bold and innovative move, but also a quick and necessary response to the current crisis, and a support for the scrambling designers and brands – that we should do with social responsibility."

This year's event running through March 30 is an online mega show with more than 100 participating fashion houses and designers, from home and abroad, displaying and selling their new Autumn/Winter collections on Tmall's various virtual shopping rooms.

In the following week, a string of catwalk shows will be presented through hundreds of livestreams.

Most cutting-edge technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) are being utilized to create professional and realistic catwalk atmosphere, ensuring the viewers enjoy an immersive experience.

"We have integrated some of Alibaba's most advanced technologies to bring a new and elevated experience to consumers," said Mike Hu, general manager of Tmall Fashion and FMCG.

"This partnership with the SHFW allows us to leverage our experience in digitizing brick-and-mortar retail stores and explore a new format for brand and product launches," Hu added.

Through the combination of the most avant-garde designs with most advanced technologies, the cloud fashion week also brings together multiple facets of fashion business, making a shortcut from high-end catwalk shows to daily online shopping.

Viewers, from celebrities to fashion freaks, can not only take a sneak peek into the latest trends for the coming season, but also interact with the hosts and directly place their orders.

It is world's first cloud fashion show that connects catwalks and e-commerce, offering unprecedented one-stop, all-around experience to designers and viewers, as well as buyers and sellers.

The special edition is expected to generate tremendous online traffic with wide-scale exposure, as all netizens, regardless of their location, can become front-row viewers during the shows, the committee said.

Many industrial insiders believe that the cloud fashion week, as a brand-new exploration for fashion designers and traders, is a water-testing moment for the future of the fashion market in reaching a wider range of consumers.

"We hope this new form will allow designers to try different ways to display their designs through different channels in the market and sell," said Lyu.

(Cover image and infographic by Sa Ren)