⭐️CAMP SASSA AFTER DARK
Submitted to the approval of the midnight society I call Sassa Gurl the Fashionable Cool Girl of the Month. An Aquarius who describes herself in three words—complex, fun, real—Sassa is drawn to the things that make life a little more dramatic, and a lot more fabulous. Her current obsession is photography, her playlist is unapologetically full of pakilig songs, and when it comes to horror, she chooses The Substance. She names Angelica Panganiban as her favorite actor and Ryan Murphy as her favorite director, choices that somehow make perfect sense for someone whose world sits comfortably between comedy, camp, and the macabre. Even her favorite fictional character she would bring back from the dead is Justice Hernandez from Bar Boys—because, naturally, death is not necessarily the end of the story.
That same spirit makes Sassa's relationship with fashion impossible to separate from who she is. She refuses to belong to one particular fashion era, taking inspiration from everywhere and allowing her style to evolve with her. Growing up poor, she imagined magagarang clothes, and now that she has the means to create and buy, fashion has fulfilled those childhood fantasies. For Sassa, camp is more than looking fabulous. It is a state of mind—understanding the irony of glamour, rejecting the ordinary, and having the confidence to disrupt it in your own way. Her clothes become a love letter to the person she was, while her increasingly fearless style becomes a celebration of the person she has become.
That same sensibility follows her into Multwoh: Love After Death, where Sassa steps behind the camera as a producer while also taking on the role of actress. The film brings together young queer creatives and turns horror into an unexpected space for love. Instead of following the familiar horror tradition where queer characters as tokens, Multwoh asks what happens when the ghost comes back because of love. The result is campy, funny, romantic, and unmistakably bakla. For Sassa, that is where the film becomes more than a horror story. It speaks to the realities of a community whose hopes and dreams can constantly feel threatened, yet continues to choose love anyway. The comedy comes from that collision between the absurdity of horror and the very real struggles queer people recognize—and perhaps that is why it feels so familiar.
There is something inherently political about Sassa's particular branding. Queer cinema and camp have always found power in exaggeration, humor, and fantasy. Sassa understands that being extra can be its own form of resistance. She can talk about The Matrix as her favorite queer film and make a unapologetic horror flick about love after death. It all belongs to the same universe. For COOL's September Fashion Issue, Sassa reminds us that fantasy is never simply frivolous. Sometimes the kitschy outfit, the dramatic entrance of the glamorous Multwoh can make space for something serious. #CoolisinSession #CoolGurlSassa
