There are almost no cars on Lamu. Goods arrive by dhow and travel onward by donkey, through lanes so narrow that two people pass with a turn of the shoulder. The island sits off the north coast of Kenya, and its Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001, has been a Swahili trading settlement for some seven hundred years. For a woman deciding what to wear in Lamu, that history is the whole brief. The island is devout, unhurried and warm in every sense, and it is dressed for accordingly.

The first distinction is between town and shore. Lamu is a Muslim community, and in the Old Town and the village lanes of Shela, shoulders and knees are covered as a matter of ordinary courtesy. Nobody will say anything to a visitor who forgets. The island is too gracious for that. But the women of Lamu notice, and a guest who has taken the trouble is received differently. On the long beach beyond Shela, on the deck of a dhow and inside the walls of a private house, the rules relax.

For the town, then, a long sleeve in a fabric that breathes. The PP linen blouse is cut to the hip with a full-length sleeve and closes with seashell buttons; worn over a long skirt, it answers the island's expectations without a second thought. Sky Blue and Lemon sit well against whitewashed coral stone. Orchid, deeper and cooler, belongs to the hour after the evening call to prayer, when the seafront fills and the charcoal is lit for grilled fish.

The climate is equatorial and constant. Days sit close to thirty degrees through most of the year, the air is heavy with the sea, and the only real seasons are the winds: the Kusi from the south-east through the middle of the year, the Kaskazi from the north-east from December to March. October falls between them, calm and hot, before the short rains of November. This is weather in which linen shows its character. The fibre takes up moisture from the skin and gives it back to the air, and the cloth keeps a little distance from the body. Our note on linen in humid weather explains why.

A morning in the Old Town is a morning on foot. The carved doors are the island's signature, heavy teak and mahogany frames cut with Swahili, Omani and Indian patterns, and the way to see them is to walk without a plan from the fort towards the northern end of the seafront. The stone benches built into the house fronts, the baraza, are there to be sat on. The Amelia linen dress shirt in Dubarry or Pink is right for this: a single garment, generous through the body, with enough colour to stand beside the kanga cloth hanging in every doorway. In Oyster, with walnut buttons, it is quieter still. Worn with a long skirt beneath, it keeps to the custom of the town.

Shela, forty minutes' walk along the shore at low tide or ten minutes by boat, is where most visitors stay. The village is a maze of white houses and bougainvillea behind a dune, and beyond it the beach runs empty for some twelve kilometres. Here the wardrobe loosens. The ladies linen set, a blouse and shorts in one colourway, is made for a rooftop terrace, a breakfast of mango and lime, an afternoon reading under a makuti roof. Light Blue and Mint Green take the glare well. For the walk back through the village to the terrace at Peponi, where the island tends to gather at sunset, the long skirt goes back on.

Then there is the water. A dhow at dusk is the one fixed appointment of a stay on Lamu: a lateen sail, a crew of three, the channel between Lamu and Manda Island turning copper and then grey. The breeze on the water is cooler than anything on land, and the deck is all cushions and salt. The Amelia linen dress shirt in Lemon holds the last light well. It is also the simplest thing to pull on over a swimsuit after a late swim from the sandbank, when modesty and warmth happen to ask for the same garment.

Lamu needs less luggage than seems reasonable. Houses on Lamu are staffed, washing is done by hand and dried in an hour on the roof, and linen comes back from the line softened by the sea air. Two PP linen blouses, two Amelia linen dress shirts and one ladies linen set will cover a week. Linen creases, and by noon it will have; in a town built of coral and lime, nothing is pressed flat. Those travelling on down the coast will find the same approach carries through the Kenyan coast to Zanzibar.

Lamu does not change for its guests, and that is the reason to go. It asks only that a visitor arrive lightly, dress with a little thought, and leave nothing behind that the island cannot absorb. Linen, cut by hand and softened by wear, is a fair answer to that request.

What to Wear on the Kenyan Coast for Women  ·  What to Wear in Zanzibar  ·  The Amelia Linen Dress Shirt Guide