An aircraft cabin at cruising height is one of the driest rooms a person will ever sit in. Its air holds very little moisture, comparable to a desert afternoon, its temperature moves between cool and close over the course of a night, and the passenger remains in one position for eight, ten or fourteen hours. The case for linen for long-haul flights starts from those three conditions. It is a cloth made for managing the small climate between skin and fabric, and on a long flight that climate is most of what a traveller can control.

Consider what the body is doing. It is seated, so the back and the backs of the legs are pressed against upholstery for hours, and warmth and moisture gather there even when the cabin feels cool. It is still, so circulation slows, and feet and ankles tend to swell as the flight goes on. Anything tight at the waist, the thigh or the cuff becomes tighter. What is wanted is a garment that is loose without being shapeless, that lets air move, and that does not hold damp where the body meets the seat.

Linen answers that description closely. The cloth at the small of the back takes up moisture and tends to dry while it is being worn. The weave lets air through. And a linen shirt or trouser cut with some ease does not bind when a traveller turns in a seat or sleeps awkwardly in one. There is nothing clever in it. It is the plain behaviour of a natural fibre, and the reason the same shirt is comfortable on a terrace in July.

For him, a long sleeve is the better choice on board, since the cabin is usually cooler than the departure gate and cooler still over an ocean at night. The Bliss Linen Shirt in Dark Blue or Grey, or the Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Oyster, in certified Belgian linen, with the sleeves rolled or let down as the hours require. PP Casual Linen Trousers in Black or Oatmeal, in a size that allows for sitting, serve from check-in to arrival. A fine knit over the shoulders deals with the coldest hour, somewhere before the cabin lights come up.

For her, the PP linen blouse in Orchid or Sky Blue has long sleeves and sits easily under a wrap or a knit. The HER Laos Linen Shirt in Blue or Grey, worn open over a vest, makes a light second layer that can come off without disturbing a neighbour. The Amelia linen dress shirt is better kept for the other end of the journey: folded at the top of the cabin bag, it is the garment to change into before landing somewhere warm.

Honesty requires a word about creasing. Linen creases, and ten hours in a seat will mark any linen shirt across the lap, at the inside of the elbow and over the back. This is the nature of the fibre and no fault in the garment. There are three reasonable ways to meet it. Accept it, as seasoned travellers do. Choose a deeper colourway, where creases read less sharply than on white. Or carry a second shirt and change in the last half hour; a linen shirt rolled loosely takes little room, and our note on packing linen shirts shows the method.

The larger advantage appears on arrival. Long flights very often join two climates: a northern winter and the Gulf, Europe and the Indian Ocean, a cool morning and a tropical afternoon. A traveller in linen beneath a warm layer leaves the layer in the bag and walks out of the terminal into thirty-three degrees already dressed for it. In the other direction the same shirt becomes the layer nearest the skin under a coat. Few garments in a case do both as willingly.

A few practical notes complete the picture. Spills happen on aircraft; blot them at once with plain water and a napkin, without rubbing, and deal with them properly at the hotel. Deeper tones, such as Dark Blue, Grey and Dubarry, are forgiving of both marks and creases. On arrival, hang the shirt in the bathroom while the shower runs and much of the journey will fall out of it; for the rest, a steamer is quicker than an iron.

None of this turns a long flight into a pleasure. It does remove one of its smaller miseries, the feeling of having spent a night in garments that worked against the body. Linen asks very little of the traveller and gives back a degree of ease at each stage: at the gate, in the seat, in the queue at the far end, and in the first hour of wherever the journey was going.

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