Panu: Slave Trade, Dress, and Fashion in Cape Verde, 1600-1800s

A vibrant trade in slaves and other goods between the Cape Verde islands and mainland, known as Upper Guinea, enabled a back and forth movement of goods, ideas and peoples. This allowed for the forging of one broad region culturally, between the islands and coast. This paper explores the development of cotton cloth (panu) as fashion in Cape Verde and how gender and class influenced this process. The manner and the type of pano worn varied among the social classes, because people with means, such as some manumitted slaves, particularly freed African women, used silk, damask, and other type of finery.  The rise of an Afro-Atlantic feminine aesthetic in Cape Verde, I argue was the continuation of Guinean “cultural core” rather than creolization.  During this period, people expressed their identities in a number of ways, and importantly through the clothes they wore. Cultural brokers changed identities as quickly as they changed shirts, demonstrating who they were through dress as well as language and professions of religious affiliation.  This flexibility of identity led to cross-cultural exchange that cannot be summed up under the often-used term “creolization.”