An Ulo Akha woman's headdress is a bamboo cone sheathed in handwoven cotton, dyed blue-black with indigo, then covered until the cloth is nearly gone: rows of Job's tears seeds alternating with convex aluminium discs, woven silver mesh, cone finials, gibbon fur, red rooster hackles, and old coins swinging along the lower edge.

It is built over years, because the silver has to be accumulated first. The coins are readable — rupees on a wealthier woman, low-value baht on one with less. This system takes that literally: a dark ground, dense stacked rows that never quite match, and metal doing all the speaking.