The linen to bring to Zanzibar is light enough to breathe in thirty-degree humidity, cut to cover the shoulders and knees where the island asks for it, and made by a house that can show where its flax was grown. On an island where white cloth has been the dress of the street for generations, that is the standard any linen brand should be held to, and the one Pieter Petros sets for itself.

Men in Stone Town still walk to Friday prayers in the long white kanzu and an embroidered kofia cap, and the coast’s old trading families dressed for the heat long before any visitor arrived. Zanzibar is hot, humid and largely Muslim, and the right garment here has to be light, modest and quietly correct all at once.

Stone Town owes its character to the nineteenth century. In 1840 Sayyid Said, Sultan of Oman, moved his seat of government from Muscat to Zanzibar and pressed the island’s landowners to plant cloves; the spice trade paid for the coral-stone merchant houses, the carved wooden doors and the balconies that still shade the narrow lanes. The old town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000. Its most famous building, the Beit al-Ajaib, or House of Wonders, partly collapsed in December 2020 while under restoration, a reminder of how much salt air and humidity ask of anything made by hand.

The same conditions are the test for linen. Begin with the fibre: long flax, spun into a smooth, even yarn, makes a cloth that hands moisture back to the air quickly, and in Zanzibar’s humidity that counts for more than any colour. Then the weave, which should be open enough to show a little light when held up to the sun. Then the proof: Belgian Linen® is a private certification mark whose certificate follows the flax from the field to the cloth, and what that certificate covers is worth knowing before trusting a label. Last, the finish. Pieter Petros garments are handmade in the Dubai atelier and in Belgium, with buttons cut from seashell on the shirts, in natural materials chosen so that each piece is biodegradable by design.

The island’s year is set by two rains. The long rains, the masika, fall from March to May, with April usually the wettest month; the short rains come in November and December, lighter and briefer. June to October is the dry season, sunny and a little cooler, with July to September the driest months, and January and February bring a second dry spell, the hottest weeks of the year. Linen suits every one of these months, but the dry season asks for the lightest weights and the hot weeks after New Year for the loosest cuts.

Stone Town asks for covered shoulders and knees, out of courtesy rather than rule, and especially in the old town and during Ramadan. For a man, the Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Oyster, in certified Belgian linen, with PP Trousers 100% Linen in White from the men's linen collection, is right for a morning walk from the Old Fort to the Forodhani Gardens. For a woman, the PP linen blouse in Sky Blue, worn with long loose trousers or a long skirt of her own; the Amelia, cut to the thigh, belongs to the hotel and the beach rather than the old town. In the evening, the waterfront food stalls at Forodhani fill with families, and the same long-sleeved shirt stays right as the light goes.

The beaches are another island. At Nungwi in the far north, where dhows are still built by hand on the sand, the sea stays deep enough to swim at every tide and the sunsets face west across the water; along the east coast at Paje and Jambiani, the reef lies far out and the lagoon empties at low tide, which has made it a place for kitesurfing. Here a man wears PP swim shorts in Sapphire Blue or Vanille, all in Belgian linen and made for the water, and puts a Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt in White over them, once dry, for lunch under a palm-thatched makuti roof. PP linen shorts in Beige are for the walk back through the village, never for the lagoon. For her, the Amelia linen dress shirt in Coral Orange, in Belgian linen, is a dress in itself, at ease from the beach bar to dinner.

Off the north-east coast, Mnemba Atoll is a marine conservation area, and a morning there by boat, snorkelling over the reef, is swim shorts and little else until the boat turns for shore. Inland, a visit to a spice farm near Kizimbani or a walk in the Jozani forest, home of the Zanzibar red colobus monkey, asks for long sleeves against sun and insects and a colour that does not mind red earth: the Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Beige Cream.

The day often ends on a dhow. Sunset sails leave from the beach in front of Stone Town and from the northern coast, and once the sun is down the breeze off the Indian Ocean can turn cool. A Monte-Carlo Male in Oatmeal, with its walnut buttons, and PP Casual Linen Trousers in Vanille are enough for the deck; for her, the Amelia in Hibiscus, its deep colour at home against a darkening sky, with a light layer for the return.

For Zanzibar, the collection is chosen and ordered before the journey, and for travellers flying in through the Gulf, the boutiques at Park Hyatt Dubai and Sofitel The Palm in Dubai present it in person. It is a wardrobe of few pieces, each able to move between the old town’s quiet codes and the freedom of the beach; what to wear in Zanzibar, day by day, has its own chapter.

Read more: What to Wear in Zanzibar for Women · What to Wear in Zanzibar for Men · Linen for Tanzania