Kéa is about an hour by ferry from Lavrio, which makes it the Cycladic island nearest to Athens and, oddly, one of the least visited by people from anywhere else. There is no airport, and the island has long been a place of weekend houses for Athenian families who come to be left alone. That audience shapes any honest answer to the question of a linen brand in Kéa. Few people here dress to be noticed. Clothes are looked at closely, at arm's length, by people who know what good cloth is, and that is the test this article applies.

It helps that the garments can be examined on the island itself. Pieter Petros is presented in the boutique at One&Only Kéa Island, one of the resorts where the house has chosen to be present, and a visitor can do there what a screen does not allow: feel the weight of a shirt, see a colour in Aegean daylight, turn a button over. Linen is a material that is understood by hand. A brand that is willing to be handled in the place where it will be worn has already answered part of the question.

The rest of the answer is in what the hand finds. The first thing is the fibre. Certified Belgian linen carries a certificate of origin that follows the flax from the field to the finished cloth, and what that certificate means is set out elsewhere in the Journal. The second is the making: PP garments are handmade in the Dubai atelier and in Belgium. The third is the detail. Most of the shirts close with seashell buttons, the Monte-Carlo Male with walnut, and the men's shorts and trousers with walnut too. The garments are biodegradable by design, which on an island of oak woods and dry-stone terraces is a point that needs little explaining.

What the island asks of those garments is varied for so small a place. Ioulida, the capital, is closed to cars: it is entered on foot through an arch and climbed by stepped lanes to a path that leads, after a quarter of an hour, to the Lion of Kéa, an archaic figure carved into the rock and smiling at something. That is a morning for a Cuba Linen Shirt in Grey or Blue and PP linen shorts in Beige. Vourkari, on the north coast, is where the sailing boats moor stern-to in front of the fish tavernas, and the evening there is a degree smarter: the Vibes Linen Shirt in Dark Blue with PP Casual Linen Trousers in Vanille, or for a woman the Amelia linen dress shirt in Hibiscus or Dubarry.

The coast supplies the remainder. Otzias is the wide sandy bay in the north; Koundouros, in the south-west, is a run of small coves with clear water; and the ancient city of Karthea lies on the south-east shore at the end of a footpath that takes about an hour each way and has no shade worth the name. Swimming is a matter for PP natural swim shorts, in Oatmeal or Black. For the path to Karthea, a loose long sleeve in a pale colour is the considered choice, and the shirts for it are in the men's linen collection. For the beach lunch afterwards, the ladies linen set in Lemon or Sky Blue is enough.

A fair article should say what it is not claiming. Kéa has its own small shops, and there are other houses in Europe making good linen with care. The case for PP on this island is narrower than a ranking. The garments are at one address here, and a reader who doubts a sentence in this article can go and hold the shirt it describes. Readers who want the criteria on their own, apart from any brand, will find them in how to identify premium linen.

Most journeys to Kéa pass through Athens, and the house is present there as well, at One&Only Aesthesis on the coast south of the city. The two addresses make a natural pair for a traveller who lands in Athens, spends a night by the sea and takes the ferry from Lavrio the next day; how the wardrobe carries across is described in what to wear in Kéa. The women's garments named here are in the women's linen collection.

Kéa will not reward a loud wardrobe, and it has no occasion that requires an elaborate one. It rewards a few garments in good cloth, worn often and washed in between. An island that has kept itself this quiet, this close to a capital city, is a reasonable judge of what lasts.

What to Wear in Kéa  ·  The Best Linen Brand in Athens  ·  The 100% Belgian Linen Guide