The article isn't bad. The main issue is the interpretation of why the edict was created in the first place.

The plaçage system was a huge deal in New Orleans. Wealthy white men would have, essentially, second marriages with light-skinned women of color while they were still legally married. The daughters of placées and these white men would still be considered "colored" due to their mothers' statuses - but they themselves could be 7/8 white, and pass easily. The elite whites did not like that a woman with African descent could be mistaken for white, as it implied that she could then pass out of her sphere and into theirs. With a tignon as a badge of racial identity, it would be impossible to make the mistake, and a placée's daughter would have to go into plaçage instead of marriage.

Sumptuary laws like this were common in Spanish colonies in the Americas. (And similar ones had existed previously in Europe, restricting various colors and fabrics to the nobility.) The Spanish also tried to legislate against plaçage - not to protect women from a cycle of prostitution, but to restrict racial mixing - which worked much less effectively, although there's no evidence that the tignon law was ever enforced.

See: The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie