On Sunday night, the carpet was under the feet of celebrities like Teyana Taylor and Timothée Chalamet. By Monday afternoon, it was inside Paige Thalia’s apartment.
Some of it, anyway.
Ms. Thalia, 32, a production assistant who lives in Hollywood, said she had recently returned to Los Angeles after spending some time traveling. Outfitting her new place was proving expensive, and she was looking for a cheap, new rug.
Earlier in the week, she noticed the red carpet being installed outside the Dolby Theater, the Hollywood venue where the Oscars would be held, while she was walking her cockapoo, Cove.
“I got the idea, when I was walking her down the red carpet, that I could maybe track that down after the awards,” Ms. Thalia said. (The carpet was still wrapped in plastic at this time, she added.)
This idea began germinating nearly a decade ago, Ms. Thalia said, when she attended a taping of Kelly Ripa’s talk show at the Dolby after the tear-down of the Oscars that year. Staff handed out pieces of the red carpet to audience members, Ms. Thalia said.
In 2025, Steve Olive, the owner of Event Carpet Pros, the company that has long provided the carpet for the Oscars and many other awards shows and marquee events, including the Super Bowl, spoke with The New York Times about the 50,000-square-foot rug he installed that year outside of the Dolby Theater. He declined to disclose the cost. The custom shade of red at the Oscars is an exclusive hue, he said. His carpets are made of recycled materials and then are recycled after the events, Mr. Olive added. Or, in this case, upcycled.
On Monday morning after the awards ceremony, Ms. Thalia arrived at the theater at 8:30 a.m. She thought her textile dreams were dashed when she saw the carpet was already gone.
Her next thought was to see if she could find the used carpet nearby, she said.
On a street near the theater, just behind where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tapes, she found a notably clean dumpster containing her prize. She looked to a nearby security guard for permission to take some home.
“I said, ‘I have an insane question,’” she recalled. “‘Can I have some of that red carpet?’”
Ms. Thalia said the guard didn’t bat an eyelash, and instead pulled a souvenir piece from her own pocket. Ms. Thalia grabbed the biggest piece she could physically lug home, which measured 6 feet by 8 feet when she unrolled it in her apartment.
It was in “good shape,” Ms. Thalia said, despite having served as the walkway for Hollywood’s biggest night. She vacuumed the rug and set about trimming it to fit her space, a task that has already dulled one pair of scissors to uselessness, she said. Ms. Thalia has plans to add some trim to make the remnant look more finished and to stop it from further fraying, since the rug, she said, did not appear designed to last.
She documented this dumpster-diving adventure on TikTok, where several other people said they were inspired to see if they could get their own piece of red — or “mauvey maroon,” according to Ms. Thalia — carpet. At least one person told Ms. Thalia she had succeeded.
“I did find a fake plant in it that must have come from some of the décor,” Ms. Thalia added. “There were also some sequins and some feathers from dresses. I need to track down who might have been wearing those.”
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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