South of the Sado estuary, the Alentejo coast flattens into rice paddies, umbrella pines and a beach that runs almost without interruption towards the south. In the older villages the houses were built low, of reed and timber, under thatched roofs; storks nest on chimneys and poles above the fields. Comporta has become a much-admired place to spend a summer, and it has done so without much changing the materials it was made from. For anyone looking for the right linen brand for Comporta, that is the starting point: a place where almost everything in view is natural, and where clothes are judged, quietly, against it.

Pieter Petros works in the same register. The core of the collection is certified Belgian linen, a certification that follows the flax from the field to the cloth, and the garments are made by hand, in Dubai and in Belgium. Most shirts close with seashell buttons, the men’s trousers and shorts with walnut. Nothing in the composition asks the landscape to make room for it, and when a garment has finished its long life, it is biodegradable by design.

Comporta is easiest to read through its colours. In early summer the rice is a bright, wet green; by late summer it ripens towards straw. The cork oaks inland are stripped every nine years, leaving their trunks a raw terracotta that darkens slowly to brown. The dunes are pale, the pines nearly black at dusk, and the Atlantic is a cooler, greyer blue than the Mediterranean. A wardrobe that follows this palette looks settled from the first day. The Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt in Mint Green picks up the paddies, and the same shirt in Vanille or Beige Cream sits with the sand and the reed; Dark Blue, in the Vibes Linen Shirt, answers the pines. For women, the Amelia linen dress shirt in Oyster, closed with walnut buttons, has the colour of dry grass at the edge of a dune, and the ladies linen set in Sky Blue repeats the colour of the Atlantic sky.

The places themselves vary more than the reputation suggests. The village of Comporta has a handful of restaurants and a café around a small square. At Carrasqueira, on the estuary, a fishing pier stands on wooden stilts above the mud flats, its walkways leading to boats moored at the end. Pego and Carvalhal have beach restaurants set into the dunes, long lunches being the main event of the day. Further south, Melides has its own lagoon and a growing number of houses hidden in the pines. To the north, the Tróia peninsula is reached by ferry from Setúbal, and the estuary between them is home to a resident group of bottlenose dolphins.

The Atlantic changes the evenings. Even in August a breeze comes off the sea after sunset, and in September and October the air near the coast can turn cool and damp. A long-sleeved shirt is the most useful thing in the bag: the Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Dark Blue, worn with PP Casual Linen Trousers in Oatmeal, goes from a beach table at seven to a dinner in the pines at ten. For women, the PP linen blouse in Orchid with a pair of wide trousers from her own wardrobe gives the same coverage against the breeze. Shoes are rarely needed on the sand, and espadrilles or flat sandals cover everything else.

The collection is presented in a curated circle of resort boutiques: One&Only Aesthesis near Athens, One&Only Kéa Island, Tiziano Brunetto in Santa Margherita Ligure near Portofino, Park Hyatt Dubai and its Lagoon Beach Club, Surf Club Dubai, Sofitel The Palm Beach Resort and the Four Seasons Resort and Residences in Río Grande, Puerto Rico. For Comporta, the full collection is available online, and a summer house there is usually planned far enough ahead for a wardrobe to arrive with time to spare. For the coast itself, what to wear in Comporta follows a day from the paddies to the beach, and linen across Portugal looks at the wider country.

In September the rice is cut, the fields turn to a stubble the colour of Oatmeal linen, and many of the storks that nest above them begin to leave for the south.

Read more: What to Wear in the Alentejo  ·  What to Wear in Cascais