Annabel Trends

In 1967 Ann Dawe sat down at her own kitchen table in Melbourne and started designing tea towels. Not as a business plan. She simply thought the ones in the shops were dull, and the sixties were happening everywhere except, apparently, in Australian kitchen drawers. What came off that table was bright, loud and patterned, and people wanted it.

The company grew out of that one decision, and the thing worth noticing is what it did not do next. It did not become a napery company that eventually got bought. It stayed in the family. In 2006 Ann's daughter Sally Dunn moved the whole operation from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, and Sally runs it today. Ann has retired. The business is still owner-operated, still Australian, and still starts every product with someone deciding what a thing should look like.

Burleigh Heads is where a good part of it is now made. There is a factory, and in it a sewing and production team, and the cotton and linen goes through their hands. Tablecloths, napkins, aprons, tea towels. The rest of the range is sourced from around the world, as it has to be, but the napery, the thing the company was born doing, is still made here.

The designs come from Australian artists, named and credited, more than a dozen of them at any time. Their work goes onto the linen, sells for a season, and then the print retires and something else takes its place. It is a restless way to run a range and it is exactly what Ann was doing in 1967.

In 2026 they released a print called Annie's Apples. Green apples on gingham, pulled from the bold optimism of 1960s Australian design, named for the founder. Nearly sixty years on, the company is still making the thing it made first, and still making it here.