What do you get when you put together New York’s most iconic hotel, one of the world’s leading film directors, plus a legendary video game auteur? The chicest Prada Mode on record, apparently.

The 14th edition of Prada’s contemporary culture series took place in New York last week, curated by Nicolas Winding Refn and Hideo Kojima, coinciding with the Tribeca Film Festival. The pair have enjoyed a unique, decades-long friendship despite their language barrier, choosing to eschew AI and human translators for communication via images on iMessage. Their first collaboration for Prada was Satellites in 2025, a Tokyo exhibition exploring “the connection between love, language, and creativity”, and now they return with Satellites II, marrying those themes with the glamour and grit of New York in the 70s and 80s.

As one of the city’s most legendary institutions – mythologised for its bohemian past, famous residents and alleged ghostly occupants – the Hotel Chelsea was completely transformed by Kijoma and Refn, given a metallic, retrofuturistic makeover, nodding to the past while looking forward into the future. For all the best moments from Kijoma and Refn’s two-day residency, scroll through our list below.

EACH GUEST RECEIVED THEIR OWN PRADA CASSETTE PLAYER

After being shown upstairs, guests soon discovered that their rooms were kitted out with all kinds of goodies, including Prada-branded toothpaste and toothbrushes, which surprisingly caused a bit of a stir online. The star of the show, however, was a cassette player, headphones and four tapes, retrofuturistic in vibe, containing the recorded voices of both Kijoma and Refn.

THE PRADA MODE CHANNEL WAS BEAMED INTO EVERY ROOM

Refn and Kijoma’s takeover of the Chelsea Hotel didn’t just include its physical space, but its airwaves too. On the first floor, production teams took over three separate hotel rooms – one completely covered in silver sheets, another decorated in whimsical clouds, while a third was occupied by a retro control panel you might find in a 70s sci-fi. From here, the Prada Mode Channel was beamed into every in-room TV as its own bespoke channel alongside all the regular networks. The variety of programmes and talk shows included Story Time with Maya Hawke, Horoscope of the Day with Raymond Arnold, plus a DJ set from legendary Chelsea doorman William Benton. “The channel acts as a portal into Satellites II, echoing the role of television in the 1970s and 80s as a potent portal to American culture,” the brand said of the setup.

MYSTERY VENDING MACHINES WERE AROUND EACH CORNER

One of the main installations that we were greeted by when we walked into the hotel was giant silver vending machines, emblazoned with the Prada Mode logo. Guests were then invited to scan a special barcode and choose one of the mystery gift boxes inside, and the retro-themed prizes included colouring books, stickers, cassettes and inflatable space crafts. Though they’re popular all across the world, vending machines are particularly common in Kojima’s native Japan, with the video game creator bringing a little piece of his culture to the Chelsea Hotel.

SOPHIE THATCHER MADE HER LIVE MUSIC DEBUT

Refn and Kojima kicked off the first day of proceedings with a conversation called ‘Arrogance of Youth’ alongside the Yellowjackets and Companion actor Sophie Thatcher. During the hour-long talk, the trio discussed the changing landscape of the entertainment industry across their own generations, the beauty of approaching art from an arrogant point of view, plus Thatcher’s starring role in Refn’s upcoming film Her Private Hell. But, besides being a film and television actress, Thatcher’s first love has always been music, and she followed up the conversation with a set the next day. Despite releasing her debut EP in 2024, this was actually Thatcher’s debut musical performance in front of a live audience, and what a chicer place to have it than a hotel steeped in so much musical history.

NYC’S ICONIC TAXIS GOT A SHINY NEW MAKEOVER

Not content with reimagining just one New York institution, Prada’s Chelsea takeover spilt out onto the streets, too. Parked outside the hotel were the city’s iconic taxi cabs, but their yellow exteriors had been replaced by reflective silver to match the futuristic aesthetic of Refn and Kojima’s Satellites II. Unsurprisingly, the madeover cars went down a treat, with guests jostling to have their photographs taken in front of each one.

LYDIA LUNCH TOOK TO THE STAGE

While the two-day extravaganza included musical performances from the Colorado rock band The Velveteers and Japanese singer Miho Hatori, arguably the most NY of all came from Lydia Lunch. The musician, writer and spoken-word artist first came to prominence as part of Downtown New York’s No Wave movement in the late 70s, and as the lead singer and guitarist of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. At Prada Mode, Lunch brought her anarchic style to the Chelsea in front of a packed crowd in the hotel’s Bard Room.

PRECIOUS RENEE TUCKER STOLE THE SHOW

This year, experimental pianist Precious Renee Tucker has captivated the globe with her otherworldly compositions, achieving viral fame by playing four keyboards at once. Since becoming a fashion darling – gracing magazine covers and performing at brand events – the Arkansas musician was then enlisted for this year’s Prada Mode, soundtracking the cocktail hour on the opening night of the private view. Channelling her background in astrophysics, Tucker formulated avant-garde arrangements based on each planet in the Solar System, inviting us into the performance by asking the audience to guess which celestial body she was describing.

KATZ’S DELI WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A NIGHTCLUB

At the end of day one, guests were whisked away from the hotel to another iconic NYC location on the Lower East Side. Katz’s Delicatessen was the destination for that night’s party, with its famous pastrami sandwiches on tap for hungry guests, and all the tables cleared away to make space for a makeshift dancefloor in front of the hanging salamis and neon espresso signs. Guests at the deli rave included Hunter Schafer, Louis Partridge, Maya Hawke, Ziwe and current Dazed cover star Myha’la.

AMANDA GORMAN IMPROVISED A POEM ON THE SPOT

Award-winning poet Amanda Gorman was next up on the conversation schedule, sitting down with Kojima and Refn for a talk all about ‘Therapeutic Decadence’. Throughout the wide-ranging discussion, Gorman dropped multiple nuggets of wisdom about the power of the written word, the extent to which language has been used for good and bad throughout history, while Kojima and Refn discussed their own decade-long style of communication, which involves sending images to one another in place of a shared language. At the end of the talk, an audience member asked Gorman to write a poem on the spot about the discussion they’d just had, to which she graciously accepted, improvising a new verse much to the pleasure of everyone in the room.