Brent Manalo on Post-PBB Fame and the Pressure to Deliver

When we last spoke to Brent Manalo, he was the picture of unbothered charisma, lounging in a leather jacket, tawny jeans, and a black cap, the streets around him in varying degrees of beautiful chaos. He had called himself shy, almost apologetically, before explaining his survival mechanism: the switch. “Anytime, as long as I’m in front of the camera, I can be anyone you want me to be.”

READ MORE: Behind the Quiet Cool of Brent Manalo

It is a line that feels rehearsed until you watch him mean it. Over the past few years, the “anyone” he has been is a dizzying list: actor, model, content creator with a 2.5 million-strong following, collaborator with luxury fashion houses, and now Pinoy Big Brother’s most recent Big Winner. The trajectory is all the more striking when you consider his own admission that he grew up painfully shy, using fashion as a sort of armor to meet the world on his own terms.

Dayne Aduna

Associate Editor

Dayne Aduna is an Associate Editor at VMAN Southeast Asia, specializing in fashion, grooming, film, television, and contemporary pop culture. With a strong editorial focus on menswear, his work explores how style intersects with shifting cultural movements across Southeast Asia and beyond.

His expertise spans fashion journalism, celebrity profiling, grooming and skincare trends, fragrance, runway reporting, and cultural commentary, with a particular eye for emerging creatives and youth-driven style.

Dayne has written extensively on fashion houses, seasonal trends, designer collections, and the evolving image of the modern Southeast Asian man, bringing both editorial depth and cultural relevance to his coverage.

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