Olivier, one reason the style of jacket may no longer be worn is that it is very fine work indeed - the details on page 41 of Gina's Miao textiles from China in particular show this - and it takes a lot of time to create. If the area where the villages are for this particular Miao is close to a town and open to outside influences for quite a long time the traditional clothes will have disappeared earlier and the skills lost by the younger women. They may also be working in the towns and not back in the villages on the land. Clothes also evolve even within local traditions.
I was with Gina in 2002 and we went to 2 villages in the Guizhou - one in Huishui county and the other in Luodian county - where there were Miao known as Qing Miao. Both had a tradition of a patchwork skirt. In the first the skirt was no longer worn everyday but it was still worn by young girls for festivals. These had even evolved from old skirts which we also saw. In the 2nd village there were some old patchwork skirts that we saw but none were worn now even for festivals and, in fact, trousers seemed always to be worn. In the cultural revolution the old traditions were very much deplored and efforts made to stamp them out. It is only more recently that there has been a focus on the old traditional costumes and these have been encouraged by the dance competions. In the case of my two villages it may have been too late to save the skirts in the second but they are kept in the first village and it has been the competitions which have kept them alive.
See
http://www.tribaltextiles.info/Countrie ... ogress.htm where the 1st and 2nd villages are the ones I am talking about. You will see this is 'work in progress' so not many photos to see at the moment.
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Pamela
http://www.tribaltextiles.infoon-line tribal textiles resource
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