The guidelines for these dresses is clearly is the bigger the better, the most expensive the better. There is a cultural reason behind all this ostentatiousness. Jewelry is the storehouse of the wealth of Tibetans in these regions, because they are nomadic. And I have asked a couple of Tibetans online what they think of these costumes, the gist of what they said is that they think it's beautiful, though clearly showing off by a very small and very wealthy elite

PLEASE CLICK THE LINKS TO SEE THE PHOTOS!!! :)

PLEASE CLICK THE LINKS TO SEE THE PHOTOS!!!

Not sure why the images come up as hyperlinks sometimes :(

Also sorry for double posting a couple of them

PLEASE CLICK THE LINKS TO SEE THE PHOTOS!!!

:)

If anyone can explain to me why the images aren't automatically showing sometimes, I'd be very grateful :)

Remember that these people are from a traditionally nomadic culture, for centuries they have put the majority of their wealth in jewelry, the most suitable (portable) thing they could invest in for their mobile lifestyle

The huge peachy coral beads are probably not very old, but I believe are genuine. I've seen kilos and kilos of these peachy coral beads with our African trader friends - and their best customers for coral for years were Tibetans here in the U.S.

Of course I'm sure some antique items do exist in those pictures - I think it varies by person to person and from place to place - but the majority is probably stuff acquired over the last few decades - since China started economic free market reforms.

Just like in other regions of China, some Tibet traders and entrepreneurs have managed to make small or large fortunes. I haven't researched this thoroughly, but my impression is that 0.01 and 0.1% of families have become very wealthy - enough to buy these costumes - through business, these people I am sure have had to demonstrate some loyalty to the Chinese communist party and play the CCP's game. Then I guess maybe two or three percent of Tibetans might be at a middle class level comparable to westerners - with university educations, working as professionals or running small business. And the rest are poorer with more than half still live in pretty harsh poverty, enduring daily hardship for a dollar or two a day.

Also, something important is that most of these festivals do NOT occur in the "Tibetan Autonomous Region" (which is only 50% of "pre-1959" Tibet. They occur in the parts of that were integrated into Sichuan, Qinghai and Yunnan provinces, which have historically had far better treatment and less interference from the government, have had far less Chinese immigration (many towns are 97% or more Tibetan people - compare that to Lhasa which is now less than 50% Tibetan people), and consistently named the places where Tibetan culture is best preserved.

Sadly things have taken a turn for the worst since the 2008 protests around Tibet, there are crackdowns happening in varies towns such as Aba - the stage of the festival in the first thread I posted. It had a history of being very free and autonomous with very little government/security force presence. But since 2008 riots have happened, many people have died, been tortured etc. and several of the monastery who campaign for Tibetan succession are currently under seige. A very scary situation with a real threat of escalation