For a great many people, December is not winter. In Dubai the afternoons are in the mid-twenties; in the Caribbean, the trade winds blow steadily and the sea is warm; in Sydney and Cape Town, Christmas falls in high summer. The festive season there keeps its rituals, the long lunch, the family gathering, the party at the turn of the year, but moves them outdoors. Linen for the festive season is about dressing those rituals for warmth.

The difficulty is one of register. Festive occasions ask for something more than everyday clothes, but the wool suits and velvet dresses of a northern December are wrong in thirty degrees. Linen solves this: it can be formal, pressed and exact, and still be cool. It takes a dark colour as well as a pale one, and it looks considered at a long table.

Christmas lunch by the sea is the classic case. It is long, it starts at midday and runs into the afternoon, and it is often outside on a terrace or under an awning. For him, a long-sleeved linen shirt in a deeper tone, Dark Blue or Dubarry, with linen trousers reads as festive without being heavy; the Monte-Carlo Male shirt has the formality of the day. For her, the Amelia linen dress shirt in Hibiscus or Violet carries colour that belongs to a celebration, worn as a dress with sandals and jewellery.

Christmas Eve, in many families the more important evening, is often a dinner at home or in a restaurant. In the Gulf, December evenings cool noticeably, and something warm is wanted on a terrace after dark; Dubai in winter follows that pattern through the season. In the Caribbean, the evening air stays soft, and the shirt is enough.

New Year's Eve is the most dressed night of the year, and in warm places it is often spent outdoors: on a beach, a rooftop, a yacht deck. An Oyster linen shirt with linen trousers has a clarity that suits fireworks and candlelight; PP shoes, made from natural fabrics such as velvet and silk with leather soles, add the touch of evening that linen alone does not. On St Barts, where the harbour fills with yachts for the turn of the year, the evening has its own customs: New Year on a yacht in St Barts.

The days in between are the quiet heart of the season: family days at the pool, walks on the beach, long breakfasts. The PP natural sets, a matching shirt and shorts in linen, are easy for these days, and the PP natural swim shorts are the garment for the water. For her, the ladies linen set or the PP linen blouse with a skirt carries the days without effort.

Linen also travels well for a season of movement: a flight to family, a short trip between islands, a few nights in a hotel. A small festive wardrobe in linen can be three shirts, two pairs of trousers and one set for him, and for her the Amelia linen dress shirt, the PP linen blouse and the ladies linen set, with a knit for the cooler evenings.

There is a gift in this too. A linen shirt given in December is worn on the day it is opened, in these climates, and through the months that follow; linen as a Christmas gift is a natural extension of the season.

Read more: What to Wear in St Barts at Christmas  ·  Linen for Winter Sun