KOCHI: Kerala had a ‘red carpet’ moment at the Met Gala, one of the biggest and most talked about events in fashion. Held every year at the 153-year-old Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Met Gala attracts the biggest names from a number of spheres.
To usher them inside is a long, white carpet. Interestingly, this was woven by artisans from Alappuzha.
Neytt, a design house by Extra Weave based in Cherthala, had supplied the carpets for the Gala, not just once, but for the second time in a row!
The 106-year-old family business has also provided carpets to Buckingham Palace, the White House, to various celebrities and five-star hotels.
The largest art museum in the United States, the Metropolitan has been hosting the Met Gala since 1948.
“Every year, the red carpet has a specific theme that each guest replicates by way of their costume. This year, to honour the late German designer Karl Lagerfeld, the organisers were specific about a white-coloured carpet,” said Sivan Santhosh, the founder of Neytt and the director of Extra Weave.
This year, even the designs were a departure from the norm. “The serpentine lines with ‘S’ shapes were inspired by an English painter,” Sivan added. His family has been in the carpet business since 1917.
“My grandfather, K Velayudhan, started The Travancore Mats and Matting Co in 1917. In 2000, my father started Extra Weave, and two years ago, I founded Neytt,” said Sivan.
“We received the Met Gala work through one of our customers, Fibre Works, who do es various high-end projects in the US. The carpet for this year’s Met Gala was made from sisila fibre obtained from the bark of Agave cactus, imported from Madagascar,” Sivan explained.
The work
“We manufactured 58 rolls, each 30 metres long and 4 metres wide, roughly 7,000 sq metres. It took 70 days to manufacture the carpet. Artisans in New York did the stencil hand painting,” Sivan said.
Recently, the Met Gala decided to move away from the traditional wool carpet to natural fibre-based carpet. “Last year, we made them the traditional red-coloured carpet using fibre,” Sivan said.
SIGNIFICANCE
S-lines, white colour
The S-shaped lines reflect the popular hypothesis as a salute to the year’s theme, Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty. It was the famed 18th-century English painter William Hogarth who introduced the Line Of Beauty aesthetic, featuring S-shaped curved lines. “It is said that when it has flowy lines, it creates more attention and gives a lively look,” said Sivan, the founder of Nyett.