Akha dress is easy to recognize and has many distinct parts. The main colors are red and black, and women’s outfits also incorporate a great deal of silver, especially in the elaborate headdresses decorated with dangling silver coins.

The women often seem to be hidden behind the many layers of the Akha costume, with just their faces and knees poking out. The headdresses vary from clan to clan, but most are elaborate and heavy and include a silver board propped up at the back of the head and a ‘helmet’ made of silver bobbles. The black shirt usually has lines of solid color sewn into the fabric, and the women wear many, many layers of beaded (often white) necklaces. The shirt is worn over a black knee-length apron/skirt, and black cloth heavily stitched with colorful solid lines are wrapped around the calves.

The black pants and shirts worn by men are usually much less detailed than those of the women. Sometimes men wear black vests with colored lines stitched onto the back, but even the most elaborate male outfit pales in comparison to those worn by Akha women!

Both genders often carry matching bags, black with red and other solid-color lines sewn in and a beaded fringe.

There are three main styles of dress:

U lo is a pointed headdress, a style worn by Akha who have lived in Thailand for many years. About 25 different clans wear this style.

Loi Mi, named after a large mountain in Burma, is a style of flat headdresses worn by many migrants from Burma. Thai Akha often call them U Bya, meaning “flat headdress.”

 Pa Mi is a style confined to the Mah Po clan. Though the name comes from a village in Thialnd, the style is worn by Mah Po in China, Burma and Thailand.