When it comes to buying fancy dress costumes you can rely on George to make sure it’s great quality, outstanding value for money and all about play!

We test all our George costumes to the European Standards CE mark and – for all our children’s costumes – we go above and beyond our legal requirements to do additional flammability testing. This means our children’s dress-up is tested to the same high standard as nightwear meeting the BRC Code of Practice and the Nightwear test (BS5722).

Every year in the run up to Halloween the media report on the dangers of fancy dress costumes that don’t meet the required safety standards. I’m very glad to say we didn’t have any incidents with flammability last year and our dressing-up costumes performed very well in flammability burn tests carried out by the media.

As Technical Manager for Compliance and Dress-Up I work closely with our Product Safety team and supplier partners. Using our vast knowledge of potential problematic fabrics, we are able to work together as early in the process as possible to avoid issues.

For example, adding lots of glue, glitter and transfers to costumes will affect how they perform in flammability tests. And we have to be mindful of where we place components such as sequins and trims. There are different safety standards for costumes for children aged under three which is why you will sometimes see variations in the designs.

All the costumes are independently tested so you can rest assured you can rely that the product has been put to the test.

Other manufacturers and retailers might not be so careful so always check the label before you buy – or, better still, choose a costume from our George range for complete peace of mind.