Brazilian slaves functioned as the master class’s costume and dress

Evidence

Now the slave was more than an object of luxury, as Lacerda had believed. The slave in nineteenth-century Brazil had become a costume, an item of social dress and self-presentation as well as the source of the energy that produced the real wealth of the economy. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 744

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-panics/immodesty thread in the reader’s existing work — the enslaved as socially worn garment parallels dress-as-status-signaling analysis.
• SEED: The slave-as-costume lens could ground an article on how conspicuous consumption converts labor into wearable social dress across eras, from sedan chairs to the fashion labor chain.