Paros gave the ancient world some of its most prized marble, a stone so fine-grained that light is said to enter it before it is reflected. The Venus de Milo was carved from it. An island with that inheritance is a fair place to ask what quality in a material means, and anyone searching for a linen brand in Paros is asking a version of the same question. This is a plain account of what the island demands of linen, how PP's garments answer, and where they can and cannot be found.

First, a matter of fact. PP is not presented in any boutique on Paros. In Greece the collection is found at One&Only Kéa Island and at One&Only Aesthesis on the Athens Riviera, and it is available online. A traveller who wants PP linen for Paros therefore arranges it before the ferry, or on the way through Athens. Everything that follows is offered on that basis: as a way of judging any linen for this island, with PP's garments as the example the house knows from the inside.

The first test on Paros is wind. The strait between Paros and Naxos is one of the reliable wind corridors of the Aegean, which is why Golden Beach and New Golden Beach on the east coast draw windsurfers from across Europe. On a meltemi day in July, cloth that is too light becomes a nuisance, lifting at every corner in Naoussa harbour. Linen for this island wants a little substance. The Laos, the Cuba and the long-sleeved Bliss are shirts with some substance to the cloth, and each closes with seashell buttons.

The second test is light. Parikia and Naoussa are built in whitewash and marble, and Lefkes, the old capital in the hills, is paved in it. Reflected light of that strength is unforgiving to poor dye and flattering to good cloth. Pale shades look most at ease: in the men's linen collection, White, Oyster, Vanille and Beige Cream. Colour, where it is wanted, reads well against so much white: the Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt in Dubarry or Lemon Yellow, the Vibes Linen Shirt in Orchid.

The third test is what the garment is made of besides the cloth. Paros is an island where materials are still noticed: the marble thresholds, the caique hulls on the slip at Naoussa, the cane roofs over the tavernas at Aliki. A shirt in natural linen with buttons of seashell, or the Monte-Carlo Male shirt in Oyster with its walnut buttons, belongs among them without effort. PP's swim shorts are 100% certified Belgian linen, with a walnut button at the back pocket. These are small points, but they are the ones that separate a garment considered as a whole from one that is merely labelled linen.

For women the same reasoning applies. The Amelia linen dress shirt in Oyster, Dubarry, Violet, Coral Orange or Hibiscus is Belgian linen; in Lemon, Pink and Blue it is natural linen, and the house says so plainly instead of blurring the two. The PP linen blouse, in Orchid, Lemon, Pink and Sky Blue, and the ladies linen set complete what is needed for the island: a morning at Kolymbithres among the granite rocks, lunch in Naoussa, an evening in the lanes of Parikia behind the Ekatontapiliani, the church of a hundred doors.

How a brand speaks about origin is a fourth test, and a useful one anywhere. Belgian Linen is a certification mark, granted to cloth woven in Belgium from European flax, and a house that uses the term should be able to say which of its colourways carry it. PP's own answer is that its garments are made by hand in two places, the Dubai atelier and Belgium. A reader comparing labels on Paros, or before travelling, can reasonably ask the same of any maker: where the flax was grown, where the cloth was woven, where and how the shirt was sewn.

The last test is time, and the island supplies it quickly. A week of salt air, sun cream, ferry benches and a basin wash tells more about a shirt than any description. Linen of good fibre comes out of that week softer, with its seams flat and its colour steady. It will also be creased, as all linen is, and on Paros that reads as evidence of a day well used. Rinse salt out in fresh water, dry in the shade, and it is ready for the Byzantine path from Lefkes down to Prodromos the next morning.

Whether that makes any single house the right choice for Paros is for the wearer to decide, and the island rewards those who decide slowly. What can be said is that the criteria are not mysterious: weight, colour, natural materials, an honest account of origin, and the way the cloth looks on the seventh day. Our guide to what to wear in Paros turns those criteria into a bag, and the account of PP in Athens describes where the collection can be seen in person on the way.

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