Comme Des Garçons (Like We Used To)

Rina Sawayama has always been interested in the intersection of fashion, identity, and emotional memory, and this track from Hold the Girl crystallizes that fascination into something genuinely anthemic. The production is stadium-ready—massive synthesizer chords, drums that seem to expand on impact, everything tuned to the scale of collective experience rather than private confession. The Comme des Garçons reference operates on multiple levels: cultural shorthand for a particular queer fashion consciousness, a specific memory anchor, the simple pleasure of naming something beautiful and expensive and shared. Sawayama's voice carries enormous reserves of warmth even as the lyrical content circles loss and nostalgia—she wants to return to the way things were, the particular tenderness of a past shared aesthetic, a shared person. Something about remembering not just someone but a version of yourself: who you were when you wore certain things, moved through the world with someone specific beside you. The emotional arc is bittersweet at maximum amplitude, the sadness given room to transform into joy through sheer sonic scale. Its queer cultural context gives it specific resonance—fashion and music as survival tools, identity markers, the means by which a self is assembled and remembered. Best experienced in a crowd where the production's scale finds its correct physical context.