Linen and hemp are the closest relations in the world of cloth. Both are bast fibres, taken from the stem of a plant and not from a seed pod or an animal, and they are processed in nearly the same way: the stalks are retted, broken, scutched and combed before the fibre is spun. Under a microscope they are hard to tell apart. The comparison of linen vs hemp is therefore not one of opposites. It is a comparison of two good natural fibres with different temperaments, and the choice between them depends on what the cloth is for.

The plants themselves are less alike than their fibres. Flax, from which linen is made, is slender, about a metre tall, with a small blue flower, and it gives its finest fibre in the cool, damp coastal belt that runs from Normandy through Flanders into the Netherlands. Hemp is a larger and more forceful plant, growing to two metres and often well beyond, and it tolerates a much wider range of climates. That difference in scale carries into the fibre: hemp's is generally longer and coarser, flax's finer and more supple.

Fineness is the first real point of difference, and it follows directly from the plant. Because flax fibre is finer, it can be spun into a thinner, smoother yarn, and that yarn can be woven into light shirting with a clean surface. Hemp yarn is usually thicker, and hemp cloth correspondingly more substantial, drier in the hand and more visibly textured. Fine hemp fabrics exist and can be very beautiful, but they are uncommon. For a shirt meant to be worn against the skin in heat, linen offers a wider choice of light, refined cloths.

On the body the two behave alike in the ways that matter in warm weather. Both absorb moisture readily and release it to the air; both let air through the weave; both feel cool. The difference is in the first impression. Good linen is smooth from the first wearing and becomes softer with washing. Hemp tends to begin with a firmer, slightly rougher hand, and softens more slowly, over many washes, into something very agreeable. Neither resists creasing. Any account that claims otherwise for either fibre is not describing the cloth honestly.

Both are strong, and hemp's strength is historic. For centuries it was the fibre of rope, rigging and sailcloth, and the word canvas descends from the Latin for the plant. Linen has its own record: it is unusual among fibres in being stronger wet than dry, which is one reason it tolerates decades of laundering. In a garment, either will outlast most of what hangs beside it. The practical difference is of character more than of durability. Hemp is the sturdier, heavier-feeling cloth; linen the finer, with more drape.

They differ to the eye as well. The long, smooth fibres of flax give linen a quiet natural lustre, most visible in pale and undyed shades, and linen takes dye with depth. Hemp is more matt and a little more rustic in appearance, with a natural colour that tends towards grey-beige. Both show the small irregularities in the yarn known as slubs, hemp usually more than linen. Which is preferable is a question of taste and purpose: a degree of roughness that suits a work jacket or a bag may be more than is wanted in an evening shirt.

On the land, both have much to recommend them. In the right climate each grows on rainfall, both return to the soil at the end of their use, and nothing in either fibre needs to be other than natural. Hemp grows quickly and densely and yields a large quantity of fibre from a field. Flax in western Europe is a rotation crop with centuries of farming knowledge behind it, from the pulling of the plant to dew retting in the field. There is no need to set one against the other. A wardrobe of either is a wardrobe that is biodegradable by design.

Where linen is ahead is in the maturity of its trade. The European flax and linen industry has long-established spinners, weavers and systems of certification; Belgian Linen, for instance, is a certification mark for cloth woven in Belgium from European flax. That makes it easier for a buyer to know what is in the hand. A reader who wants to tell the two fibres apart at home can try an old test: wet a single fibre and watch it as it dries. Flax turns clockwise, hemp the other way. On a label, linen should mean flax and only flax, and hemp should be named as such.

PP works in linen, with certified Belgian linen in much of the collection. The garments the house makes are shirts for men and shirts, blouses and sets for women, worn next to the skin in warm places, where fineness and drape count for most. None of this is a judgment on hemp, about which the Journal has written with respect in its piece on hemp as a natural fabric. The two fibres belong to the same family, and anyone who values one will understand the other.

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