A linen shirt is tested most honestly by a place with more than one climate. Ras Al Khaimah has three within an hour of each other: a long, humid coast on the Arabian Gulf, the dry red sand of the interior, and the cool limestone of the Hajar Mountains. A linen brand for Ras Al Khaimah has to answer all of them with the same few garments. Pieter Petros makes those garments in certified Belgian linen, by hand, in an atelier a short drive to the south.

That proximity matters more than it first appears. PP's atelier is in Dubai, and every shirt cut there is cut by people who live in the same light, the same humidity and the same long winter season as the northern emirate. The collection is handmade in the Dubai atelier and in Belgium, from natural materials only: linen, seashell buttons, walnut buttons, buttons made from palm tree nuts. Nothing in a PP garment is foreign to the ground it will eventually return to. It is biodegradable by design.

The coast comes first. The beaches of Al Marjan Island and Al Hamra face west across calm, shallow water, and the day there divides cleanly between sea and table. In the water, the PP natural swim shorts in Sapphire Blue or Vanille. Back on dry land, a shirt goes on: the Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt in White or Sky Blue, open at the collar, its seashell buttons a small echo of the shoreline. For her, the ladies linen set in Sky Blue or Light Blue moves easily between the lounger and a long lunch in the shade.

Then the road climbs. Jebel Jais, the highest peak in the United Arab Emirates at a little over 1,900 metres, is reached by a wide, winding road that leaves the plain behind in half an hour. The air at the top is commonly around ten degrees cooler than at sea level, and from November it can be genuinely cold after dark. This is where long sleeves earn their place. The Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Dark Blue or Oyster, worn with the PP Casual Linen Trousers in Oatmeal or Black, is enough for a clear afternoon at the viewing decks. Linen is not only a fabric for heat; its fibre holds a layer of still air as readily as it releases warmth, which is why it has been worn through northern European seasons for centuries.

The desert asks for something else again. In the Al Wadi reserve, inland from the city, the dunes are a deep, iron red and the light at five o'clock is the softest of the day. Arabian oryx move between the ghaf trees. Dinner here is taken outdoors, on carpets or at a low table, and the right shirt is one with a little ceremony in it. The Monte-Carlo Male shirt in Vanille or Oyster, fastened with walnut buttons, carries that quietly. So does the Bliss linen shirt, long-sleeved, in Vanille. For her, the Amelia linen dress shirt in Dubarry or Lemon holds its colour against the sand as the sun goes.

Ras Al Khaimah has its own long relationship with what the sea gives. Before oil, this coast lived by pearling, and the old port of Julfar traded pearls across the Gulf and beyond. At Al Rams, a short drive north of the city, cultured pearls are still raised in the lagoon by a family with roots in the trade. A visitor who spends a morning there, watching an oyster opened by hand, will look differently at a seashell button afterwards. The material is the same order of thing: made slowly by water, finished by a person, and impossible to imitate convincingly.

For days that stay within a resort, the simplest answer is a matched one. The PP Natural Set pairs a linen shirt with linen shorts in a single colourway, Oatmeal, Vanille, White, Pink or Sky Blue, and removes the question of what goes with what. The shorts are for dry land: the terrace, the garden path, the mangrove boardwalk at low tide. The swim shorts remain the garment for the water.

PP is not presented in Ras Al Khaimah itself. The collection is found an hour south, in Dubai, at Park Hyatt Dubai and its Lagoon Beach Club, at Surf Club Dubai and at Sofitel The Palm Beach Resort, and in the PP linen collection online. For those who are already choosing a first shirt, the journal's guide to linen in Dubai covers the same climate from the other end of the coast road.

Three landscapes, then, and one fabric. The emirate does not ask for a large wardrobe. It asks for a few garments that are honest about what they are made of, and at ease wherever the day ends.

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