I’ve always been a big colour person. When I see interior design or architecture content with an extremely muted, minimal palette - which seems to be so popular in the Australian modern design vernacular - I respect the approach… but think to myself, that would never work for me! Even if I started with a neutral palette, it wouldn’t be long before I would be adding in a blue lampshade, a striped tablecloth or cushion cover to liven things up a bit. For me, colour is happy making.

Dreaming up the colours for our next collection - crafted from organic crisp cotton poplin - I wanted to create a palette that was versatile, and very easy to mix and match, without being a sea of neutrals. A set of colours that feel alive, but don’t dominate, and most importantly, play well together.

The anchor: chocolate brown

A deep, dark chocolate brown serves as the base for the collection. Think a 90% cocoa chocolate, pour over coffee kind of brown. Functionally, it fills the space of black - but adds a bit more interest and somehow lifts everything with it.

The interest: peach stripe

I’ve never been a big ‘pink’ person. Maybe because of the weight of cultural history around pink being a ‘young’ and ‘girly’ colour (not ideal for someone always mistaken for being much younger than I really am).

But this vibrant peachy-pink shade reads grown-up rather than childish. It’s got personality. Presented in a shirting stripe pattern on white - to borrow a turn of phrase from beloved florist Willow Crossley - it is ‘life enhancing’!

The balance: dusty blue

I adore blue in almost every shade. As a teenager, I went through a phase of strong attachment to International Klein Blue (the specific tint of blue that artist Yves Klein used to great, dramatic effect).

Nearing the other end of the spectrum from Klein’s bold, “my eyes are almost hurting from looking at it” shade of blue, is this soft, light, muted shade of blue. It’s like the colour of a clear sky nearing the horizon.

With a cool undertone, it acts as a palate/palette cleanser (pardon the pun) against the chocolate brown and peach stripe. It’s for days when you want colour (ahem, every day) without the attention.

I imagine this blue’s school report would read, “Quiet achiever, plays well with others.”

Ever faithful: crisp white

A crisp white that works with every skin tone - just what the doctor ordered. It goes with everything, it’s fresh, it’s brightening. What more is there to say?

A modular system

I love modular furniture. It’s hard to count the number of people I have enthusiastically told about my lounge’s modular design when they come over: “Guess what, the arm rests become the back rests! It can turn into 2 smaller lounges! It can become a bed!”

I love that modular design is functional and flexible. That’s the lens I am applying to this next collection. Of course, not only from the perspective of colour choices, but also in the design and construction of the actual styles. Which I’ll save for a future Substack post!

Have a good day,

Gill Pereira is the founder of On A Good Day, an independent Australian clothing label for women up to 160 cm / 5’3”.

Mood board image credits: Peach baskets by Jud McCranie - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beach umbrella by Fatmabadem - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. All other images my own or in the public domain.

Our desire to produce our collections in India was a natural one, for a few reasons:

1. My husband’s family are there, so we have an emotional bond to the place.

2. Practically, because of point 1, India will always be a place we travel to on a fairly consistent basis.

3. And of course, a major reason is that India has a thriving textile industry, particularly in the production of cotton. Did you know that India’s cotton industry dates back thousands of years?

On that first trip, we headed to Tirrupur and Erode, via Coimbature, where we visited the facilities of organic cotton textile manufacturers and ethical garment makers. We asked so many questions and gleaned an awful lot in a short space of time. There’s something special about being in a place for yourself, meeting people face to face. For our first collection, we ended up working with a textile manufacturer we met in our travels.

Back in Sydney, with all we had learned on our visit, we slowly turned this tiny seed of a thought - a clothing label of classic pieces, ethically produced, designed and made entirely and wholeheartedly for women up to 160cm / 5’3” - into a reality.

It took years of learning and tinkering in the background to reach a point where we had our suppliers lined up, our fabrics organised, and our designs ready to produce (after several iterations and rounds of sampling). Not to mention all the other elements involved in setting up an ecommerce business!

In February 2025, on another trip to India to see family, we travelled again to meet with suppliers, in Tamil Nadu and Jaipur. As wonderful as technology is, to be able to meet over video calls across the world, there’s no substitute for being in the same room and getting to know people and the operations. Seeing our clothing pieces being crafted, meeting the skilled people working on our designs.

I’m in a privileged position to be able to meet our suppliers in person, to get to know the people involved and understand their businesses up close. I’ve made quite a few missteps and learned a lot along the way.

We’ve met with people as far down the supply chain as possible - fabric manufacturers, dyers and makers of the product. To us, it’s imperative to ensure we see first hand the craftsmanship and supply chain standards. The unseen parts of producing clothes are often more important as the ‘seen’ bits.

We are a small brand producing limited runs of our products, but even so, we want to tread as lightly as we can in the way we work with our suppliers, make and sell our pieces. We place a high value on premium fabrics produced without harmful pesticides or chemicals. If you want the details, here’s how that looks in practice for our launch collection (otherwise skip over these dot points!):

• Our 100% organic cotton jersey fabric is knitted in Tamil Nadu, India. Our supplier is certified for OEKO-Tex Standard 100 (tested to be free from harmful chemicals), the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), and certified with Grade ‘A’ by the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) (for standards of ethics and industry best practices).

• Our 97% organic cotton twill / 3% elastane blend is woven in Tamil Nadu, India. Our supplier is certified for the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). Its facility is 100% solar-powered.

• Our pieces are stitched and sewn with in Jaipur, India. Our supplier is a SMETA 4-pillar member of Sedex. SMETA is an ethical trade audit that aims to safeguard workers and covers labour standards, health and safety, environmental performance and business ethics.

Throughout the process from idea to reality, at many times I’ve been impatient for things to move along more quickly, to launch the business sooner. Sometimes, you’ve just got to trust the process, right?

In July 2025, after years of working away behind the scenes, finally we were ready to launch On A Good Day with our first collection of pieces for short women. Small beginnings, but not without a good dash of adventure on the journey to day one.

In my small samplings of India, I’ve experienced sensory overload, tasted the most delicious food, met some of the kindest people. I’ve had my sense of the world expanded with every visit, and my place in it put into perspective (i.e. the world is abundant, and I’m just happy to be here).

But there is one place I will always return to, where we find our home away from home, where family belongs, and that is Goa. A land of family, colour, lush landscapes, a warm ocean, and susegad (look it up).

Here’s to adventure,

Gill Pereira is the founder of On A Good Day, an independent Australian clothing label for women up to 160 cm / 5’3”.

This means I’m quite used to people meeting me for the first time, and saying, ‘You’re short!’ (Believe me, it happens). And they’re not wrong - compared to the average/mode/median of the population, whichever reference point you’d like to use - I am short!

Here’s the thing, I love being the height I am. Standing 151cm tall, I can use my fingertip-to-fingertip length as a handy guide when measuring up a space. I never have to worry about legroom. I never hit my head on any low overhanging branches or beams. More than all of those practical things, I’ve learned to be content in who I am and how I am.

The world, however, can send some pretty suspect signals that being short is a liability. Just think of how we use the word ‘short’ in everyday life: falling short; being short changed; getting the short end of the stick; shortcomings... the list goes on.

Beyond language, many of the objects and systems we interact with every day are made with taller people in mind, for example, kitchen bench heights, supermarket shelves, chair depths, bathroom mirror placements. Even the airbags in our cars pose greater risks for shorter people (who generally sit closer to the steering wheel).

It’s understandable that objects and products need to be standardised according to averages. Even designing for the 95% of the population still leaves out millions of people! But as a short woman, I interact with products and objects every single day that were not designed with people like me in mind - including most women’s clothing!

So what does all this have to do with the word ‘short’? If you look around, most clothing ranges for women up to 160cm (5’3”) are labelled as ‘petite’. In English, we’ve borrowed the word ‘petite’ from the French, meaning ‘small’.

At On A Good Day, however, we wholeheartedly embrace the word ‘short’. To us, the word ‘petite’ is problematic for two main reasons:

1. The word ‘petite’ seems to be a euphemism. A euphemism is used to talk around something potentially offensive or unpleasant. Being ‘short’ is not offensive or unpleasant. It’s a perfectly good way to be!

2. ‘Petite’ can be confusing, as people tend to associate it with a slender body type, rather than as describing only height (which, technically, is what it’s meant to mean).

Is this the hill we’re going to die on? No, there needs to be some degree of pragmatism here - we use the term ‘petite length’ when we need to, to help women up to 160 cm / 5 ft 3 discover our brand and clothing that is designed and made for them.

At the same time, we want to reclaim the word ‘short’ in some way, not as a negative connotation, but as a fact of who we are and how we show up in the world.

At the end of the day, maybe it’s a small thing, but it matters to us. What do you think about the word ‘short’?

On a good day,

Gill Pereira is the founder of On A Good Day, an independent Australian clothing label for women up to 160 cm / 5’3”.