The invitation usually reads the same way. A house on the ocean side, a week in February, bring very little. Guests who accept fly to North Eleuthera, cross a narrow channel by water taxi in ten minutes, and step onto a dock where the only vehicles waiting are golf carts. Harbour Island, which its residents call Briland, is about three and a half miles long and narrow enough to cross in minutes. What to wear on Harbour Island is a question the island answers for you within the first hour: less than you packed, and nothing that minds salt.

Dunmore Town occupies the harbour side, a grid of narrow lanes lined with clapboard cottages painted in pale blue, yellow and pink behind white picket fences, some of them more than two centuries old. Bougainvillea comes over every wall. On the ocean side, a few minutes away by cart, lies Pink Sands Beach, close to three miles of it, coloured by the crushed shells of tiny reef organisms mixed into the white sand. A reef offshore keeps the water calm. The sand stays cool underfoot even at noon.

The season runs from December to April, when the days sit in the mid twenties, the humidity is low and the trade wind is constant. Linen is the cloth for such a season: light enough for the sun at midday, substantial enough for a breeze after dark. For men, the Laos short sleeve linen shirt in Lemon Yellow, Coral Orange or White belongs among those painted cottages as though it had been chosen for them. PP linen shorts in Beige or Sky Blue complete it for the lanes, the dock and the lunch table. Each is found in the men's linen collection.

The beach asks for a clear division of labour. PP natural swim shorts in Vanille or Roosewood Pink are for the water, and on this sand the second of those is hard to resist. PP linen shorts are for dry land. After a swim the shirt goes back on, open, for the walk up the wooden steps through the sea grape to lunch on a terrace above the beach. For her, the ladies linen set in Lemon or Sky Blue does the same work, and the Amelia linen dress shirt in Coral Orange, worn loose, is all that the midday table requires. They sit together in the women's linen collection.

The harbour side belongs to boats. The flats west of the island are among the well-known bonefishing waters of the Bahamas, worked at a slow pole by guides who read the tide, and a day out there is a day under open sky with light coming up off the shallows as well as down. A long sleeve is not a formality. The Laos long sleeve linen shirt in Oyster or Beige Cream, collar up, covers what the sun would otherwise find, and dries quickly when spray comes over the bow. PP natural swim shorts beneath; a hat with a brim.

Evenings on Briland have a particular code, which is that there appears to be none and everyone observes it. Dinner is in the garden of an old house or on a verandah above the harbour, the sunset is watched from the dock near the Lone Tree, and the carts are parked in a line along Bay Street. Men wear a collared shirt and long trousers: the Bliss linen shirt in Sky Blue or Vanille with PP Trousers 100% Linen in White is exactly the note. For her the Amelia linen dress shirt in Violet, or the PP linen blouse in Orchid with the shorts of a ladies linen set. Shoes are flat. Heels are defeated by the lanes.

Linen creases in a golf cart and creases again in a sea breeze. On an island where the paint is allowed to fade and the fences to lean, a soft, worn shirt is in keeping; a pressed one looks as if it arrived that afternoon. Rinse salt from a garment in fresh water in the evening, hang it in the shade, and it is ready the next day.

The wider archipelago is described in what to wear in the Bahamas, and the capital in what to wear in Nassau. Harbour Island is the small, pale, slow version of both. A week here is four shirts, two pairs of shorts, one pair of trousers, and the discovery that most of it was worn twice.

What to Wear in the Bahamas  ·  What to Wear in Nassau  ·  Linen Care After Salt Water