I n March, the Metropolitan Museum of Art received a special delivery: 57 rolls of pristine white carpet, each stretching nearly 100 feet long. Stored securely until around 3 a.m. on the first Monday in May, the precious fabric will be unfurled down the museum’s iconic Fifth Avenue steps and meticulously hand-painted by a team of artists, transforming it into the stage for hundreds of VIPs who will strut , sashay, and smize their way into the Met Gala later that evening.

The man behind those 73,625 square feet of magic carpet is 35-year-old Sivan Santhosh, co-owner of Neytt by Extraweave, based in Kerala, India. He started the company with his wife, Nimisha Srinivas, in 2021 continuing a family legacy of carpet weaving that stretches back more than a century.…