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This article is published in number 8 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 23, 2022.

To understand what the Metaverse and understand its potential, just take a step back in time. Imagine the passenger car of Back to the Future which takes you to 1982. You arrive in any city, Milan, New York, Paris … You decide. Get out of the car, stop someone on the street and explain to them what internet and social media are. The face of those who will listen to you will become doubtful.
And in 99 out of 100 cases, those who listen to you will not understand what you are explaining. And 1% of those who understand you will be afraid. Well, today you are in 1982 and the Metaverse is simply the evolution that the internet and social media will take over the next 10 years. So, to understand, leave confusion and fear aside.

Some clarity on the term: “Metaverse” comes from Snow Crasha science fiction novel written by Neal Stephenson in 1992. And, in fact, a metaverse already exists: it’s the video game Fortnite and it was used, initially, only to play. Then, however, it was transformed into a social network, into a shop where you can buy digital products and finally into a theater where you can attend concerts by Travis Scott and Ariana Grande.

The same thing will happen to the future Metaverse but bigger: it will be a digital place of unlimited creativity where to have experiences you will need an avatar (an alter ego) and above all a passport that will certify the identity of everything that will be purchased or used. . This passport is more simply called NFTa certificate that guarantees to every good sold and used its authenticity and also the ownership of its owner.

Bags, cars, shoes, houses, islands, even seas: everything will be created and encoded in the Metaverse with an NFT to then be sold and used and resold and reused. More: probably, in the next few years, a bag created in the real world will be sold in a physical store and at the same time with an NFT in the Metaverse, guaranteeing its use in the real world and one in the digital one.

This is only a simplification to understand the possibilities of work, creativity, earning and even the revolution of experience and knowledge brought by the Metaverse. In this first, exclusive fashion shoot in the Metaversefor example, we created ithe first avatar of a newspaper: is called Vanity Player One, wear clothes from the current designer collections and you can experiment on your smartphones. Vanity Player One is our first step into the Metaverse: get ready, because our surprises don’t end there, on the contrary, we can say that they have just begun (and you will soon understand what we are talking about).