About our Supertunic

The Twelfth Century was an era of cultural and technical innovation that has been called both the High Middle Ages and the Little Renaissance. In southern France, troubadours wrote a new form of music that sang of courtly love, while the rough-and-ready knightly class adopted a new ideology of its own: chivalry. The brutality of the Crusades not only caused the birth of new, distant kingdoms and the new knighthood of the Knights Templar and Hospitallers, but reopened a gateway to the East that brought an influx of new ideas, technologies and materials. The great, Gothic cathedrals, universities, and the reopening of the silk trade were all children born of this new cultural flowering. It was also an age of legendary personalities, whose names have survived the centuries: Henry Plantagenet, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, William Marshal, Saladin and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.

This era was also an age of innovation and elegance in civilian dress. Throughout the Norman lands in Outremer, Sicily, England and France, sumptuous garments that were a blending of old Western and Eastern styles predominated. Subtle, but significant changes transformed the old tunic of the previous centuries into several new styles. We have chosen a design that is well documented in historical artwork and stone effigies, and was fashionable amongst both young and old during the life of the famed Richard Cur de Lion (1157 – 1199) for its combination of style and comfort. The loose, sumptuous supertunic falls below the knees and has broad, three-quarter sleeves, a deeply cut neck hole and short side slits to both facilitate movement and better display the undertunic. The tunic is cinched at the wait with either a simple, moderately wide belt or a double-wrapped belt. Our opulent, supertunics are available in a selection of linen colors with contrasting sleeve lining and yoke. As always, the garment is produced with finished interior seams and no visible machine stitching.