Blue is the colour men return to. It flatters most complexions, sits between the white of a beach shirt and the darkness of evening clothes, and repeats the two things every warm-weather holiday is made of, sea and sky. Anyone looking to buy a blue linen shirt as a man will find that the real decision is not whether to choose blue but which blue, because the shade changes where the shirt can go.

The PP collection offers blue across several cuts, all handmade in the Dubai atelier and in Belgium and finished with natural buttons. Laid out from light to dark, the choice becomes clear.

Sky Blue. The palest of the PP blues, close to the colour of a morning sky over the sea. It appears in the Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt and in the Bliss Linen Shirt, which is cut with long sleeves. Sky Blue is the daytime blue: a beach-club lunch, a walk through an old town, a deck in the shade. It pairs with white trousers, oatmeal shorts and almost everything in between. The Sky Blue shade also runs through the PP Natural Set and the PP Classic Combo.

Light Blue. A touch deeper than Sky Blue, Light Blue is the Laos Short Sleeve shade that sits most easily against a tan. The Laos Short Sleeve in Light Blue is the shirt for a long lunch, worn open at the neck over PP linen shorts in White or Beige.

Blue. The middle of the range, a clear, true blue, available in three cuts: the Laos Linen Shirt, the Cuba Linen Shirt and the Male Linen Shirt. This is the most versatile PP blue. The Laos is the easy holiday shirt; the Cuba, with its relaxed character, is the one to wear untucked at a Caribbean beach bar; the Male Linen Shirt suits a city lunch or a dinner with PP Trousers 100% Linen in White.

Dark Blue. The evening blue. It comes in the Bliss Linen Shirt, the Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt and the Vibes Linen Shirt. Dark Blue is the colour for dinner on a terrace, an event under the lights or a flight home that ends in a meeting. It works with White, Vanille or Oatmeal trousers and, for a deeper tonal look, with the PP Casual Linen Trousers in Sapphire Blue. The darker shades of blue have their own article in dark blue linen shirts for men.

Choosing between them comes down to how the shirt will be used. A man who wants one blue linen shirt for an entire holiday is well served by Blue in the Laos or the Male cut. For a beach-centred trip, Sky Blue or Light Blue. For a wardrobe that already has white and neutral shirts, Dark Blue adds an evening option that the paler shades cannot.

Blue also builds outfits easily. A Sky Blue shirt with Sapphire Blue PP linen trousers reads as a single considered look; a Dark Blue shirt with White trousers is a classic evening line on any coast. PP linen shorts in Navy Blue or Sky Blue complete the daytime side, and for the water, the PP swim shorts in Sapphire Blue are cut in 100% Belgian linen. The full range sits in the men's linen collection, alongside the PP Natural Sets where blue shirt and shorts come as one.

PP linen shirts are made by hand, and linen softens with each wash, so a blue shirt worn over several summers develops a character of its own. That is part of what a natural fibre offers that a colour chart cannot show.

Pale for the morning, true blue for the day, dark for the evening: three shirts cover a man's year in the sun.

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