A single Cape Town summer day can hold a cold Atlantic beach and a wine-estate dinner, so look for a linen brand with a dense, well-made cloth that moves in the wind without turning transparent, and a range that runs from one to the other. Pieter Petros answers with certified Belgian linen, natural seashell and walnut buttons, and garments handmade in its Dubai atelier and in Belgium.

Cape Town has a Mediterranean climate with the seasons reversed. Its rain falls in the southern winter, from about May to August; the summer, from November to March, is dry and bright, with afternoons usually in the mid to high twenties and the occasional heatwave well into the thirties. What defines the season, though, is the wind. The south-easterly that Capetonians call the Cape Doctor blows across the peninsula for days at a time, pours a white cloth of cloud over Table Mountain and clears the air of haze. It cools the city and moves everything that is not well cut.

That makes the cloth the first test. Linen woven from long, regular flax fibres is smoother and more even, so it moves with the wind and falls back into place instead of clinging or billowing. The second test is origin. Flax for fine linen grows above all in the cool coastal belt of Flanders and northern France, and the Belgian Linen® mark is a private certification whose certificate follows that flax from the field to the cloth; much of the PP collection carries it. The third is the making: a garment handmade in an atelier, cut with enough room through the back and shoulders that a southeaster lifts it away from the body rather than pressing it flat. The last is what the garment is made of down to the buttons, seashell on the shirts and walnut on the Monte-Carlo Male and the linen trousers, so that nothing in it outlives its use.

The Atlantic Seaboard is where most summer days begin. Clifton’s four beaches, divided by granite boulders under the Lion’s Head, and the palm-lined front of Camps Bay below the Twelve Apostles are among the most beautiful town beaches anywhere, and among the coldest: the Atlantic here is fed by the Benguela current and stays bracing even in January. The swim is short and memorable. A man wears PP swim shorts in Black or Oatmeal, all in Belgian linen and made to be swum in, and changes into PP linen shorts in White and the Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt in Vanille for lunch on the Camps Bay strip. For her, the Linen Ladies Set in Coral Orange, light enough for the beach and composed enough for the restaurant terrace. On the warmer water of False Bay, Boulders Beach near Simon’s Town is home to a colony of African penguins, and the walk along its boardwalks asks for the same easy linen.

In the city, Bo-Kaap climbs the slope of Signal Hill in rows of brightly painted houses, the historic heart of the Cape Malay community. Dating back to the late eighteenth century, the neighbourhood is a living residential quarter, not a backdrop, and its cobbled streets and vivid façades repay a slow, unhurried walk. For a man, the Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Beige Cream with PP Casual Linen Trousers in Oatmeal from the men's linen collection suits the warm Cape air perfectly; for a woman, the PP linen blouse in Orchid, also in Belgian linen, with a long skirt or long loose trousers of her own. From there the V&A Waterfront and Zeitz MOCAA, the contemporary art museum carved out of a historic grain silo, are a short drive.

The Winelands are the other half of a Cape Town stay. Constantia, inside the city’s southern suburbs, is where Groot Constantia has made wine since 1685; Stellenbosch, founded in 1679, is the country’s second-oldest town; and Franschhoek, the “French corner”, was settled by Huguenot refugees at the end of the seventeenth century. A long estate lunch under oaks asks for warm, earthy colour. The Monte-Carlo Male in Oatmeal, with walnut buttons, and the PP Trousers 100% Linen in Sapphire Blue; for her, the Amelia linen dress shirt in Dubarry, in Belgian linen, a dress in itself and at ease at a vineyard table. Our vineyard lunch wardrobe takes the occasion further.

Summer evenings in Cape Town end late and outdoors: a sundowner above Clifton, a picnic at one of the Sunday concerts at Kirstenbosch, the botanical garden founded in 1913 on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain. When the southeaster is up, the air cools quickly after sunset, and long sleeves are worth having. The Amelia in Oyster, with its walnut buttons, for her; for him, the Laos Long Sleeve in Oyster with the Oatmeal trousers.

For travellers coming from the Gulf or Europe, the collection is presented in Dubai at Park Hyatt Dubai, The Lagoon Beach Club, Surf Club Dubai and Sofitel The Palm Beach Resort, and in Europe at One&Only Aesthesis, One&Only Kéa Island and Tiziano Brunetto in Santa Margherita Ligure. For the women’s side of the city, see what to wear in Cape Town for women.

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