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Craft meets culture with Kerala-based brand Neytt at the Met Gala
Based in Kerala, Neytt by Extraweave, founded by Sivan Santhosh and Nimisha Srinivas, draws from a legacy of carpet-making that dates back over a century. In 1917, K. Velayudhan established the Travancore Mats and Matting Company, laying the foundation for what would become a global export house for finely crafted rugs and carpets.
For the fourth time, Neytt brings this lineage to the Met Gala, merging heritage craftsmanship from Kerala with artistic expression from New York to create the canvas for fashion’s biggest night. This year’s theme, Fashion Is Art, accompanies the Costume Institute’s exhibition Costume Art, inviting designers to approach fashion as a living, moving artwork, blurring the lines between couture, sculpture, and performance.
Spanning 6,840 square metres across 57 rolls, each measuring 3x40 metres, the rolls were shipped to New York, where they were hand painted by artists aligned with the Gala’s curatorial vision.
The making involved a meticulously manufactured processing in Cherthala, Alleyppey, Kerala using premium, hand-sorted natural sisal fibre sourced from Madagascar. The base carpet was woven in a bouclé construction, delivering a refined and durable surface suited to the scale of the event.
Spanning 6,840 square metres across 57 rolls, the carpet was shipped to New York, where it was transformed under the direction of Raúl Àvila, alongside the Met Gala design team including Baz Luhrmann and Derek McLane. Hand painted to resemble a stone pathway with moss-green accents, framed by cascading wisteria in lilac, pink, and white, the setting took on an ethereal, almost dreamlike quality - an interpretation in step with the Costume Art theme.
The base carpet was woven in a bouclé construction, delivering a refined and durable surface suited to the scale of the event.
“To be part of the Met Gala for the fourth time is incredibly meaningful. What begins in Kerala, shaped by the hands of our artisans, ultimately becomes the stage for the world’s most powerful expressions of fashion and identity’, says Sivan Santhosh, Founder & CEO, Neytt Homes and Director & COO, Extraweave Pvt. Ltd.
Blake Lively at the 2022 Met Gala, celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Neytt’s journey at the Met is marked by reinvention. From the bold red-and-blue stripes of 2022’s In America: An Anthology of Fashion, to a meditative, swirling collaboration with Tadao Ando in 2023 for the Karl Lagerfeld tribute, and a deeply expressive 2025 edition painted by Cy Gavin - a midnight blue field punctuated with narcissus flowers - each year has redefined the carpet as a site of artistic dialogue.
2025 Met Gala celebrating "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
With each return to the Met, Neytt has moved from a behind-the-scenes contributor to a more globally recognised presence. What travels from Kerala to New York is more than a carpet, it is a story of craft, culture, and everything that unfolds upon it. A story to be celebrated, collected, and preserved.
