The Met Gala red carpet may have taken on a blue hue on May 6, but a slice of Kerala quietly found its place under the world’s most photographed feet.
This year’s carpet—designed to reflect the 2025 theme Superfine: Tailoring Black Style—was woven in Cherthala, Alappuzha, by Extraweave, a company better known for its ties with global furnishing giants like IKEA and Ralph Lauren Home.
With dainty yellow and white daffodils blooming across a deep indigo base, the carpet sprawled across 6,840 square metres of the Metropolitan Museum’s entrance, setting the tone for the fashion spectacle.
The Met Gala, held annually at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is one of the most high-profile events in the global fashion calendar. Organised as a fundraiser for the museum’s Costume Institute, the invite-only gala doubles as the opening night of its yearly fashion exhibition. Each edition follows a specific theme that sets the tone for everything—from celebrity outfits to exhibition curation. Over the years, it has evolved into a platform where fashion, identity, and culture intersect, often sparking conversations far beyond the red carpet.
The white base of the carpet, woven from sisal fibre imported from Madagascar, was sent in 57 rolls, each four metres wide and 30 metres long. Sisal—one of the world’s longest, finest, and whitest fibres—needed to be hand-sorted by artisans at Extraweave to avoid shade variations. Even a single off-colour thread could disrupt the entire visual, according to the company.
A team of 480 people worked for over 90 days to meet the standards expected by the Met Gala organisers. “It was a collective effort across departments,” said Sivan Santhosh, director at Extraweave and CEO of its design label Neytt Homes. “The boucle weave we used required specialised looms. It wasn’t just a carpet—it was fashion, art, and history underfoot.”
Once woven, the carpet was shipped to New York and hand-painted by artists, under the creative direction of American artist Cy Gavin.
Gavin chose the narcissus flower as the carpet’s central visual motif, symbolising themes of rebirth and identity—concepts that tie into the broader narrative of Black dandyism and self-expression.
This wasn’t Extraweave’s first tryst with the Met. The firm has been associated with the event since 2022, when it first provided the carpet. In 2023, it supplied the off-white base for the Karl Lagerfeld-themed gala. But 2025 seems to have brought a larger spotlight to the team behind the weave.
The colour indigo, which defined the base this year, carries a heavy historical load—linked to the transatlantic slave trade and colonial exploitation. Its use here was seen by many observers as a thoughtful nod to fashion’s more complicated past, particularly in the context of Black cultural heritage.
Despite the glamour of the Met Gala, much of the behind-the-scenes effort, especially from places like Kerala, often remains out of frame. Neytt Homes, founded by Sivan and Nimisha Suresh, is still a relatively young design label but benefits from Extraweave’s longstanding industrial ties.
While Neytt has been supplying rugs to the Gala since 2019, its contribution has mostly flown under the radar in India.
