The Templar Tabard: Colors, Cross, and How to Style It

The classic Templar tabard colors are deceptively simple: a white ground marked with a red cross, most often the flared cross pattée, worn over the heart. That is the image most people picture, and it is broadly right. But the fuller history is more interesting. Knights of the order wore a white mantle as a badge of purity and their vow of chastity, while sergeants and serving brothers wore black or brown. The red cross was a later addition, granted in 1147, and even the word “tabard” is a small anachronism worth explaining. Below, we break down each color, what it meant, and how to carry that meaning into modern apparel.

What Colors Did the Templars Actually Wear?

The order that Hugues de Payens founded around 1119 was, first and foremost, a religious community. Its members took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and their clothing was meant to preach those vows rather than flatter the wearer. The Rule endorsed at the Council of Troyes in 1129, shaped with the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, regulated dress in plain detail.

Color signaled rank inside the brotherhood:

• White was reserved for the knights, the full brothers. The Church granted them the white mantle as a sign of purity and of the chaste life they had promised.
• Black or brown was worn by sergeants and serving brothers, distinguishing them from the knights while keeping the whole community in humble, undyed or plainly dyed cloth.

Those same two colors reached beyond clothing. The order carried a war banner known as the Baucent (also spelled Beauséant), described in the sources as parted black and white. Chroniclers differ on which color sat on top, so the precise arrangement is uncertain, but the meaning attached to it was consistent: fair and gentle to friends, black and terrible to enemies. Black and white, in other words, were not only rank markers on cloth but the fighting identity of the order itself.

So seriously was the mantle taken that losing the right to wear it was among the gravest penalties a brother could face. To be stripped of the habit, even for a season, was a public humiliation within the community and a sign that a man had fallen short of the purity the white cloth proclaimed. The Rule also forbade vanity: no fur trims except lambskin, no pointed shoes, no excess of cloth, and nothing that smacked of decoration for its own sake. Clothing, in other words, was never incidental to Templar life; it was a daily sermon stitched in wool.

The Red Cross: When and Why

The detail everyone remembers, the red cross, was not there at the beginning. It was granted by Pope Eugenius III in 1147, and the brothers wore it on the mantle and surcoat, set over the heart on the left breast or shoulder. The color was chosen deliberately: red for the blood a knight was willing to shed, and for the crown of martyrdom he might earn in the Holy Land. Once granted, the cross was borne by knights and sergeants alike; what still separated them was the color of the cloth beneath it.

The cross is most often depicted as the cross pattée, a form whose arms flare outward toward the ends. It is worth being precise here: medieval images show more than one cross shape linked to the order, and the neat, uniform pattée we picture today owes a good deal to later artists and reenactors. The symbolism, however, is genuine — a red cross marking a man as claimed for God and ready to die for the faith.

Tabard or Surcoat? A Note on the Word

Here honesty matters. The garment a medieval knight actually wore over his armor was the surcoat (in French, the surcot), a loose cloth layer that shielded mail from sun and rain and carried his identifying marks. The word “tabard” is related but later, and in the Middle Ages it more often described a short, open-sided garment that became strongly associated with heralds. When we say “Templar tabard” today, we are using a modern, convenient label rather than the term a brother of the order would have recognized.

The popular white-with-red-cross uniform is likewise a partial reconstruction. Primary sources emphasize the mantle or cloak as the true badge of a knight, more than a fitted surcoat. If you want to go deeper on getting these details right, this guide to recreating historically accurate attire is a sensible next step.

How the Garments Were Made

Templar clothing was overwhelmingly wool, sometimes linen for undergarments, in plain weaves and muted tones. Cloth was a serious expense in the twelfth century, so garments were cut to last and repaired rather than replaced, in keeping with the vow of poverty. The mantle hung long; the surcoat was cut to move over a mail hauberk without snagging, practical armour first and emblem second.

Dress was only part of a regulated appearance. The Rule expected brothers to keep their hair cut short while wearing beards, a look that set them apart from the clean-shaven fashion of many secular knights and reinforced that they belonged to a disciplined religious community. Everything about how a Templar presented himself was meant to read as order rather than individuality.

If you are building a kit or a costume, two resources make the work easier. For fabric choices and how different weaves behave, see this overview of cloak and tunic fabrics. For cut and fit, this walkthrough on how to tailor a custom tabard from a proper pattern covers measurements and construction step by step.

How to Style the Templar Look Today

You do not need chain mail to wear the meaning. The strength of the Templar palette is that it reduces to two ideas anyone can carry: white for purity and a red cross for sacrifice and conviction. On modern apparel, that translates cleanly.

• Keep the base clean and light, echoing the white mantle, and let the cross be the single strong accent.
• Wear the cross over the heart, just as the brothers did, rather than scattering symbols across a garment.
• Let the piece stay plain, in the spirit of the Rule; the restraint is the point, and it reads as heritage rather than fancy dress.

If you are pairing pieces, let earth tones and neutrals do the supporting work — charcoal, stone, or deep brown echo the sergeants’ cloth without competing with the cross. The aim is a look that feels deliberate and grounded, the visual equivalent of the Rule’s preference for substance over show.

Worn this way, a simple tee or shirt becomes a quiet nod to eight centuries of history. The white ground and a single red cross say more, and say it with more dignity, than a garment crowded with symbols ever could — which is exactly what the original sober habit was designed to do.

Carrying the Colors Forward

The Templar tabard was never about fashion; it was a habit that announced a vow. White declared purity, black and brown marked service, and after 1147 the red cross declared a readiness to give everything. Understanding those colors lets you wear them with intention rather than imitation. Choose a piece that keeps the meaning simple, wear the cross where it belongs, and you carry a genuine thread of medieval devotion into a modern wardrobe.

Take the shield with you: the Milites Templi — Templar Shield Tee, printed on demand and shipped to the US and EU.