Morning on the Handelskade begins with colour. The merchants' houses along Sint Anna Bay in Willemstad are painted ochre, salmon, lime and sky blue, their Dutch gables stacked against a hard Caribbean light, and the island tells a story of a governor who once ordered the façades coloured to spare his eyes from the glare of whitewash. True or not, the result is a city where what you wear is seen against a painted backdrop.

Willemstad's historic centre and harbour are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, split by the narrow bay into Punda on the east and Otrobanda on the west. The Queen Emma Bridge, a floating pontoon crossing, swings aside whenever a ship comes through, and walkers simply wait on the quay until it closes again. It is a city for walking slowly, and the heat, softened by the trade wind, rewards garments that breathe. The region's Pieter Petros boutique is at Four Seasons Resort and Residences, Puerto Rico, in Río Grande.

That is the point of the palette in linen for Curaçao. Linen holds dye with a slightly matte, uneven depth, so a coloured shirt looks soft beside a bright wall rather than competing with it. A Male Linen Shirt in Pink reads well against the ochre houses of Punda; a Cuba Linen Shirt in Grey is calm against the brighter blocks of Otrobanda. Both sit in the men's linen collection, worn with PP Casual Linen Trousers in Oatmeal for a day of walking between the Floating Market, where Venezuelan boats still sell fruit, fewer now than before, the Fort Amsterdam gate and the cafés by the bridge.

On the women's side, the same logic applies. The PP linen blouse in Lemon, worn with long, wide trousers, has the brightness of the island without its insistence. In the evening, the Amelia linen dress shirt in Hibiscus is the dress for dinner, and the Linen Ladies Set in Light Blue covers a day at the beach. All of them are in the women's linen collection.

There is a quieter link between Curaçao and the cloth. The island's language, architecture and street names are Dutch, and the flax behind certified Belgian linen grows in a belt along the Channel coast, from northern France through Belgium and into the Netherlands. The certificate follows that flax from the field to the woven cloth, which is why it matters more than a label. Our note on what the Belgian linen certificate means explains how the chain is traced.

Away from town, the west of the island is a run of small coves cut into limestone. Playa Kenepa, also known as Grote Knip, is the postcard bay of turquoise water below a cliff; Playa Lagun is narrower and calmer, a place for snorkelling. These are days for PP natural swim shorts at the water and a shirt pulled on for the drive back past the old plantation houses, the landhuizen, that still mark the countryside. The guide to what to wear in Curaçao follows those days in more detail.

Evenings gather in Pietermaai, the district of restored mansions just east of Punda, where restaurants spill onto terraces and courtyards. Dinner is relaxed, but the old houses give it a certain polish. A Laos Long Sleeve Linen Shirt in Dark Blue, with PP Trousers 100% Linen in White, matches that mood, and a long sleeve is pleasant when the wind cools after dark.

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