White authorities in Caribbean colonies enacted a variety of sumptuary laws restricting African Caribbean dress. Laws differed by region, but all were intended to segregate and subjugate people of colour.

Pictured here is a regulation published in Haiti in 1779. It prohibits gens de couleur (people of colour) from 'assimilating' white fashions or wearing luxury goods 'incompatible with the simplicity of their condition and origin'. Many such laws were especially aimed at women of colour in attempts to discourage inter-racial relationships by reducing their appeal to white men.

Translated excerpt:

ART. II. We most expressly forbid them to affect in their headdresses, clothing or finery, any reprehensible assimilation with the manner of dress of white men or white women [...]

ART, III and last. We likewise forbid them all luxury objects in their exterior, incompatible with the simplicity of their condition and origin [...]

Related Database Records

Entry no. 73: On sumptuary laws against Black people in French Antilles in the Caribbean.