THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES

While Marina Summers continues to grow in stature all over the world, she reminds us of the power you must have out of drag.

- YSMAEL SUAREZ

ADRIAN ALABADO DOESN'T DO ANYTHING HALF-HEARTED. Neither does Marina Summers.

But the former, the 27-year-old who was raised in Nueva Vizcaya, will obviously inform the latter, his drag persona that, as of this year, has become an international sensation. From finishing as runner-up to the inaugural season of Drag Race Philippines, she exploded into global consciousness by being invited to join the second staging of Drag Race: UK vs The World.

There, she was introduced with a bolo in hand promising to slay the "colonizers," which she did, week in and week out through her performances and captivating runway looks on the main stage.

For today's shoot, however, the brief was a lot calmer. "As Marina, I don't present her, like, half-done. You know what I mean?" she tells Vogue Philippines. "So it has to be full glam. It has to be, you know, full Marina Regalia and everything. But this time, Vogue wanted to take it on a different route, which is very more, you know, stripped. Yes. I may call it that word. It's more stripped. It's more the canvas behind Marina."

That concept appealed to the man behind the queen. "You know, as audiences, we like to see the glitz and glamor, but we don't care to see what's behind that," Alabado says. "So I'm really, like, really interested in the direction that they wanted to go with this."

But the person is also the persona as much as the canvas is also the swirls of colors and textures that it holds.The halves make up a whole, and its totality is an art that is both hard to resist and magnificent to behold.

Speaking with Marina is like catching up with an old friend you haven't met in a long while. "It's been crazy," she says about touring and performing in different cities around the world. "I'm having so much fun, even though it's tiring."