The man trusted by the Oscars to get its iconic red carpet just right

NEW YORK - On a recent weekday morning in La Mirada, a suburb outside Los Angeles, Steve Olive, 58, walked among hundreds of carpet rolls in red, green and lavender in a white, sun-drenched, 36,000 sq ft warehouse.

Laid out on the floor was a 46m stretch of rug, delivered by truck from Georgia a few days before, in the custom shade of Academy Red that is only available for the Oscars.

Olive himself may not be famous, but celebrities have strolled the plush craftsmanship of his carpet for nearly three decades.

His company, Event Carpet Pros, has supplied carpets for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys and Emmys, as well as for Disney, Marvel and Warner Bros. movie premieres and the Super Bowl.

And, at a moment when carpets have moved beyond the classic red and become splashier and more intricate, his handiwork has become more prominent. He has crafted custom designs like a shimmering, sunlit pool carpet for the world premiere of the 2023 film Barbie and a green-and-black ectoplasm drip carpet for the Ghostbusters world premiere in 2016 that took a month to create.

“I haven’t come across anything that we couldn’t do,” Olive, who founded the company with his brother-in-law Walter Clyne in 1992, said in an interview.

But this week – after a brief dalliance with a champagne shade two years ago – the Oscars opted for tradition and returned to a carpet in Olive’s exclusive Academy Red. The 50,000 sq ft rug was installed outside of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Feb 25, in preparation for the ceremony on March 2.

Event Carpet Pros first came about when Clyne, who had been installing tents around the country, saw a need for a company that specialised in event flooring. He asked Olive if he would be interested in starting one with him.

In the beginning, Olive said, they were a hustle-fuelled operation, putting rolls of AstroTurf under tents at small events to hide the ground and enlisting friends to help with installs.

“It was a word-of-mouth thing, like, ‘Hey, who’d you use for your carpet?’” he said. “And it just spread.”

They pitched themselves to events that might be interested in their services. Soon, Clyne set his sights on one of the biggest events of all: the Academy Awards.

“We got involved from reaching out to the Academy, and other vendors and contacts we had in the business that referred us,” he said.

It’s hard to imagine, but the modern awards show red carpet did not always exist. What is now considered a prime opportunity to capitalise on the relationship between fashion and celebrity, not to mention the publicity a designer receives when a star models their wares on one of Hollywood’s biggest stages, was once a much more subdued affair. Before 1961, stars walked directly into the venue without a designated spot to take photographs.

Once the current red carpet made its debut, though, it became a premium platform for not only fashion, but also personal branding, life announcements like pregnancies and engagements, and, of course, must-see pop culture candy.

And, Clyne argued, Event Carpet Pros, with its scrappy team and “anything is possible” mentality, could provide the floor for that world stage faster and more efficiently – and, in 1997, the Oscars bit.

The business has fully stocked warehouses on both coasts, including a second location it opened in Dalton, Georgia, in 2015, where the carpets are manufactured.

In addition to marquee events like the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Country Music Association Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards, the company also handles orders for weddings, birthday parties, corporate events and golf tournaments.

With approximately 70 employees, Event Carpet Pros handles as many as 30 orders and 10 installs per day during awards season, completing a total of more than 30,000 projects each year. The carpets are made from recycled materials and are recycled after the events, Olive said, possibly beginning life anew as wall insulation or carpet padding.

One of the company’s most frequent customers is Craig Waldman, the president and chief creative officer at 1540, an event production company based in California whose clients include Marvel, Disney, Netflix and Apple.

Over more than 30 years, he and Olive have worked on thousands of events together, including the Captain America: Brave New World (2025) and Bad Boys: Ride Or Die (2024) world premieres.

Olive even keeps an Instagram archive of some of his favourite creations going back more than a decade, including a runway-pattern rug for the Planes (2013) movie premiere and the red-and-yellow carpet for the Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) premiere in New York in 2024.

While a large portion of the company’s orders involve custom dye requests, it also keeps a stock of carpet in 30 colours on hand.

“I’ll get a call at midnight, and someone will say, ‘We forgot to order carpet for our event tomorrow. Can you show up by 10am with 20 rolls of black carpet?’” Olive said. “And we’ll be there.” NYTIMES

The 97th Academy Awards airs live on mewatch and Channel 5 on March 3 at 8am, with a same-day repeat telecast at 9.45pm.