Federal regulators recall Little Loves & Co. children's clothing over drawstring hazard

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday announced the recall of children's clothing sold by Little Loves & Co., a small online apparel seller based in Olympia, Washington, after finding that waist drawstrings on the garments pose an entrapment hazard that could seriously injure or kill a child. The recall covers two product lines: youth daywear sets pairing a crew-neck top with jogger pants, and boys' short sets pairing a short-sleeve shirt with shorts, both finished with a drawstring at the waistband.

According to the recall notice posted to the agency's website, the drawstrings "can get caught on objects and cause death or serious injury to children." The clothing was sold in sizes ranging from 12/18 months to youth 9/10, in a variety of colors and mixed-print "collage" designs, for between $15 and $30 a set. Little Loves & Co. sold the garments directly through its own site, littlelovesandco.com, and through livestream sales on the resale and auction app Whatnot, from May 2025 through July 2026. No injuries or entrapment incidents connected to the clothing have been reported so far, according to the notice.

The hazard, and the numbers behind it

The recalled items are loungewear and shortsets, not hooded jackets, which is where drawstring rules have historically focused. Federal regulation bars neck and hood drawstrings entirely on children's upper outerwear in sizes 2T through 12, a rule adopted in the 1990s after a string of deaths. Waist drawstrings on pants and shorts fall outside that strict ban but are still treated by the commission as a serious hazard, because a dangling cord can snag on playground equipment, bus doors, escalators or furniture and pull a small child into the object.

The scale of the underlying problem is not small. In its own consumer guidance on children's clothing drawstrings, the agency has said it is aware of 26 deaths and 73 nonfatal incidents tied to neck and hood drawstrings on children's outerwear between January 1985 and June 2019 alone, spanning children from 18 months to 15 years old. Those figures cover hood and neck cords specifically; waist-cord entanglements are tracked separately and less completely, since the garments involved — sweatpants, shorts, pajama bottoms — are not subject to the same mandatory pre-market ban.

How a decades-old hazard keeps resurfacing

The federal push against drawstrings dates to the early 1990s, when the commission worked with clothing makers on voluntary guidelines after a child's death drew attention to the risk, guidelines that were later written into mandatory rules for hooded and necked garments. Waistband drawstrings on pants and shorts were folded into industry voluntary standards rather than an outright ban, on the reasoning that a waist cord is less likely to catch a child by the neck than one at the hood.

In practice, the commission has kept finding waist- and hood-drawstring violations on the market every year since, mostly among smaller and newer apparel sellers rather than large retail chains, which tend to have more established compliance testing. This year alone the commission has separately ordered recalls of children's sweatshirts with drawstrings from Allura Imports and from Lola Plus The Boys, both cited for violating the mandatory federal rule on upper outerwear. The Little Loves & Co. case adds a newer wrinkle: much of its business ran through Whatnot, a livestream shopping app where independent sellers show and sell clothing on video in real time, a sales channel that sits outside the buying and testing pipelines of established children's-wear retailers.

Who bought the clothing, and what they should do

Because the sets were sold only online and through livestream auctions rather than in stores, the buyer base is scattered nationally rather than concentrated in any one region, and the company itself is small — a single-brand operation run out of Washington state rather than a national label. That is a pattern the commission has flagged repeatedly this year in the batch of recall notices it issues most Thursdays, which on August 27 also covered a nine-drawer dresser, LED light kits, pressure washers and infant walkers, among other products.

The recall notice tells parents and caregivers to take the affected daywear sets and short sets away from children immediately. Owners have two options: return the garment to the company for a full refund, or keep the clothing after removing the hazard themselves.

"Consumers should take the recalled clothing away from children immediately and contact Little Loves & Co. for a full refund after return of the product," the recall notice states, adding that owners who want to keep an item should "cut and remove the drawstring."

The company is providing a prepaid shipping label to customers who choose to return garments rather than alter them at home.

What happens next

Enforcement of clothing-drawstring rules relies heavily on manufacturers and importers catching the problem themselves, or on the commission spotting it during routine market surveillance, since children's loungewear does not go through pre-market government testing before it reaches shelves or livestream buyers. The commission's own guidance leans on parents as a backstop, urging them to inspect drawstrings on any children's clothing already in the house, not just items covered by an active recall, and to remove cords that can be snagged on furniture, playground equipment or car and bus doors.

For now, the practical next step sits with the roughly two years' worth of buyers of the two Little Loves & Co. product lines. The company has not reported any injuries connected to the clothing, and the commission's action came before any documented incident, which is typical of recalls triggered by a manufacturer's or importer's own compliance review rather than by an injury report. Whether the broader pattern of small, direct-to-consumer apparel sellers moving into livestream shopping platforms draws closer scrutiny from the commission is likely to depend on how many more similar cases surface before the end of the year; three have now become public in 2026 alone.