For Satellites II, the fourteenth edition of Prada Mode, the brand worked with game creator Hideo Kojima and filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn to transform the Hotel Chelsea into a temporary retro-futurist world.
The project moved through hotel rooms, lounges, screenings, performances, artist talks, and custom analog displays. Midcentury-style televisions carried messages from Kojima and Refn. Private rooms became small broadcast studios before opening as public installations. The Hotel Chelsea’s wood paneling, velvet furniture, and creative history gave the science-fiction elements a setting that already felt layered with memory.
That contrast is what made it work. Instead of building a spotless futuristic showroom, the activation placed technology inside a space with a past. New ideas, old screens, film, fashion, music, and game culture all occupied the same rooms.
Kojima’s involvement also made sense beyond celebrity. His games are known for creating environments that feel complete, even when players only see part of them. Objects, architecture, music, interfaces, and small background details all help establish the world. Satellites II used a similar approach, giving visitors fragments of a larger idea rather than presenting a conventional product launch.
That is becoming an increasingly important part of physical retail and brand activations. The most memorable projects do not simply place products in a room. They give people a reason to move through the space, spend time there, and discover something that cannot be recreated by scrolling through images online.
It is the same distinction that made Balenciaga’s playable SEGA installation more interesting than a standard apparel collaboration. In both cases, the physical environment becomes part of the story.
For Prada, that story was temporary by design. Satellites II only ran from June 3–7 alongside the Tribeca Festival. But that short lifespan is part of why it felt like an experience instead of another campaign.
See the official Prada announcement and view the installation at Hypebeast.
Image: Prada Mode New York installation, photographed for PIN–UP.
