In Fiji, the question of dress has an answer older than any resort. Men and women wear the sulu, a length of cloth wrapped at the waist; on formal days a man's sulu vakataga is tailored, with pockets and a waistband, worn with a shirt and sometimes a jacket. Office workers wear the patterned bula shirt on Fridays. A visitor arrives in a country that already understands light cloth.

Two settings decide the linen a visitor brings to Fiji: the village and the lagoon. Flax behaves well in Fiji's warm months. November to April is the wet season: rain arrives in short, heavy showers, the air stays near thirty degrees and the humidity rarely drops. Linen takes up that moisture and lets it go again, which is why a shirt worn on the Mamanucas in January still feels like cloth at the end of the afternoon. There is more on the fibre itself in the guide to 100% Belgian linen.

The village visit is where the choice of garment matters most. Many island stays include an invitation to a nearby village, and the protocol is clear and kindly kept: shoulders and knees covered, hats and sunglasses removed on entering, no visits on a Sunday, and a gift of yaqona, the dried kava root, presented to the chief in the sevusevu. Men wrap a sulu over shorts or trousers; women do the same, or wear a long skirt. A long-sleeved shirt is the respectful top. The Bliss Linen Shirt in Vanille or Dark Blue answers it well, buttoned and worn loose over the wrap. For women, the PP linen blouse in Orchid or Sky Blue from the women's collection covers the shoulders and pairs naturally with a sulu bought on the island. The Amelia linen dress shirt, cut to the thigh, belongs to the resort side of the day.

That resort side is generous. Fiji counts more than three hundred islands, and the luxury addresses are spread across them: Likuliku Lagoon Resort with its overwater bures in the Mamanucas, Turtle Island and Vomo further north towards the Yasawas, Kokomo Private Island off Kadavu in the south. The rhythm is the same everywhere: snorkelling or diving in the morning, a long lunch under thatch, the reef again at four, dinner on the sand. For the water, the PP natural swim shorts in Sapphire Blue or Oyster move from the boat ladder to the lunch table with a shirt pulled on at the bar. A Laos Short Sleeve Linen Shirt in Light Blue or Mint Green carries the lunch, and the PP Natural Set in White takes the evening with very little thought.

Women will find the Amelia linen dress shirt in Coral Orange or Hibiscus at home against Fijian colour: the bougainvillea, the painted church doors, the red earth inland on Viti Levu. Worn as the dress it is, with flat sandals and nothing more, it covers a lagoon lunch and a candlelit dinner alike. The Linen Ladies Set in Light Blue is the quieter alternative for a lunch ashore once the sandbank morning is over.

Arrival is usually through Nadi, often after a long flight from Sydney, Auckland, Los Angeles or Hong Kong, and then by seaplane, helicopter or launch. The last leg is short and open to the wind; a linen shirt that has spent fourteen hours in a cabin looks lived in rather than tired, and that is part of its honesty. Readers planning the whole trip will find the island-by-island wardrobe in what to wear in Fiji.

Where the collection is held: the boutiques are at Park Hyatt Dubai and The Lagoon Beach Club, Surf Club Dubai and Sofitel The Palm Beach Resort, at One&Only Aesthesis near Athens and One&Only Kéa Island, at Tiziano Brunetto in Santa Margherita Ligure, and at Four Seasons Resort and Residences, Río Grande, Puerto Rico. Travellers flying to Fiji through the Gulf can see the garments in Dubai before the onward flight.

The Fijian word for the day's greeting is bula, and it carries more than hello: it means life. On an island where a stranger is welcomed with a bowl of kava and a wrapped length of cloth, a shirt made of flax and finished with seashell buttons says something simple in return.

Read more: What to Wear on Laucala  ·  The Best Linen Brand for Tahiti