Anyone who has stopped in Oxford’s Gloucester Street to gaze longingly through the window of Annabelinda at the gorgeous dresses awaiting collection will find much to interest them in an exhibition at Abingdon County Hall Museum.

It may come as a surprise to them, as it did to me, that behind the company’s tiny corner shopfront is a three-storey building crammed with fabrics old and new, paper patterns in envelopes (1,883 of them), cardboard shapes hanging stiffly from rails, cutting tables, sewing machines, old photograph albums — all the paraphernalia and history of Annabelinda’s work over 37 years, of which the exhibition provides a glimpse.

Owner and co-founder Belinda O’Hanlon will retire when the building’s lease expires after Christmas — the business is for sale as a going concern.

“We decided this would be a good time to do a retrospective exhibition,” she said “showing completed garments but also fabrics, photographs and designs, and examples of the sort of sketches and instructions we used to send to our outworkers, which give an idea of how the clothes were put together.”

Dresses chosen from each phase of the company’s development illustrate the gradual change of emphasis from ready-to-wear to more and more made-to-measure, as high street ‘special occasion’ shops began to compete with off-the-peg ranges.

‘Design number 43’ was one of the successes of the 1970s.

“The classic Annabelinda pinafore was our bread and butter for quite a while,” said Belinda. “It went out in every conceivable fabric — velvets and velvets with silk in the winter, and two Liberty Tana Lawns in summer. I am a great devotee of Liberty fabrics — I have hoarded many of them over the years. Nowadays we buy from further afield — Italian wools for instance.”

A child’s version of the pinafore — blue Tana Lawn with a velvet jacket and a heart-shaped pocket — by one of Belinda’s designers, Marni Barnard, is in the exhibition. “It was made for a two or three year-old who now has her own two year-old, to whom it will be returned,” said Belinda, making the point that couturiers, while aware of changes in fashion, base their designs on body shape rather than seasonal trends.

Annabelinda garments are characterised by the quality of the hand stitched finish and embellishments such as the narrow bands of antique Chinese braid which Belinda bought for cash by the rucksack-full from a chap who turned up on the doorstep from Afghanistan.

In the 1980s a lot of smocking was used. “A wonderful woman in Didcot did it for us and we carried it through many designs — even wedding dresses.” Visitors can see specimens of this, and also hand embroidery and hand painting.

There’s a beautiful example of a bespoke bridal coat, in printed bluey-green dupion silk, from 1995, by which time Annabelinda was increasingly specialising in this area of the market.

Work from the current decade is represented by a luscious light gold outfit that looks as if it might float away at any moment — it has a silk satin vest and silk chiffon bolero with an extraordinary piped hem, and a skirt with alternating panels of dupion and Thai silk. These and many other delights can be seen in Abingdon until November 9.

Abingdon County Hall Museum, Market Place, Abingdon, OX14 3HG. Open 10.30am– 4pm daily. Call 01235 523703. Admission free. Annabelinda enquiries: Marni Barnard 07816 251438