Attire and Adornment of Pumi Women in Lijiang, Yunnan

The apparel and hair adornments of the Pumi people show features of other minority groups as they have long lived in the mingling with, among others, the Nakhi, Yi and Tibetan people. The Pumi women in Ninglang and Yongsheng like to mix tail hair of yaks and threads with their own hair, make them into a thick braid and then circle around the head. A head wrap, the bigger the better, would then be used to cover the braid in layers.
The Pumi women usually wear blouses with a high collar and a diagonal placket stretching from collar to the right side of waist, paired with broad pleated skirts, the waistband of which is adorned with circles of red, yellow, green and blue wool stripes. Some of them are even clad in pure white sheepskin capes with long wool. The center of the Pumi women’s skirts are often embroidered with a circle of rainbow with red as the main color, which is deemed by the ethnic group as the migration route of their ancestors and along which they would follow to where they belong after death.