Everything worth asking

Lynen helps you find out what your clothes are actually made of. You scan a garment’s barcode, and we show you what the label claims right next to what independent testing found.

If the two don’t match, we’ll tell you plainly, and we’ll show you where the testing data came from so you can check it for yourself.

Usually, it’s not because anyone set out to deceive you. A fiber content label passes through spinning mills, fabric suppliers, cut-and-sew factories, and brand paperwork before it ever reaches a printer, and things can change along the way. Fibers may be substituted mid-order when supplies run short, blends can drift between production runs, and paperwork sometimes gets copied forward from a previous season.

Whatever the cause, the result is the same: the label doesn’t always match what the garment is actually made of. Regulators in several countries test samples each year and consistently find inaccurate fiber content.

It can be. Lynen is most helpful on the shopping trips you do make, especially the expensive ones, and especially online, where inspectors have found labels fail even more often than they do in stores.

Checking a single expensive purchase can make the app worthwhile on its own. And over time, your scan history builds a helpful record of which fabrics actually work for your skin.

Not right away. You can open the app and use the scanner without one.

The account comes in when you reach the results: what independent testing found, your scan history, garment submissions, and Ly’s personal analysis are all tied to your account, so the app will ask you to sign in at that point.

Lynen works on both iPhone and Android. Barcode scanning works on any phone with a rear camera, and if you’d rather type the code in by hand, that works on every phone.

Ly is Lynen’s research assistant. It reads a garment’s verified composition against published research and explains what that particular blend tends to mean for skin, in plain language.

Ly works from the tested composition rather than the label, so the analysis is based on what’s actually in the fabric.

No. Ly gives general wellness information drawn from published research. It isn’t a diagnosis, a treatment plan, or a substitute for a clinician.

If you have a diagnosed condition or a known allergy, your doctor or dermatologist knows your situation in a way Ly can’t. Feel free to bring the analysis along when you talk with them, but let them make the call.

Skin notes are an optional free-text field on your account where you can describe any sensitivities or conditions, such as mild eczema on your forearms or a reaction to wool.

Ly reads them when writing your analysis, so the answer reflects your skin rather than a stranger’s. And if you’d rather leave them blank, that’s completely fine. Your analyses simply stay general, and nothing else in the app changes.

Only you. Your skin notes are stored on your account, they’re never sold, and they aren’t shown to anyone else.

They’re sent to the AI model that writes your analysis at the moment it writes it, and they’re never used to train anyone’s model.

Yes, it can. Ly summarizes published research, and research can be uneven, sometimes contested, and rarely about your exact situation.

It helps to treat the analysis as a well-informed starting point rather than a final verdict. That’s why every analysis shows the research it drew on and ends by pointing you to a clinician for anything diagnosed.

Not always, and this is one of the most common assumptions worth letting go of. Wool is a natural fiber, and it’s also one of the more frequent irritants. Cotton can be grown, dyed, and finished with chemistry that may matter more to your skin than the fiber itself.

What tends to matter is the specific fiber, how it was processed and finished, how it holds moisture against your skin, and how your skin in particular responds. Natural versus synthetic is simply too broad a distinction to be useful on its own.

The same goes for “organic.” The fiber can be organic while the dyes and finishes added later are not, which is why certifications that test the finished product can be so helpful.

Our data comes from independent laboratory testing of physical garments, not from brand marketing copy or supplier self-declarations.

Every verified garment in Lynen shows its sources, and you can open them yourself. If we can’t show you where a figure came from, we don’t show you the figure.

No. Brands don’t pay for placement, they can’t buy a better result, and they can’t remove a result they dislike.

That independence is what makes Lynen worth using at all. A verification that could be bought wouldn’t really be a verification, so this is a line we won’t cross.

Accredited textile labs use standard methods to separate and weigh the fibers in a sample. Chemical dissolution removes one fiber type at a time so the rest can be weighed, and microscopy identifies fibers by their physical structure. Which method applies depends on the blend.

These are established international test methods, the same ones brands and regulators use. We aren’t inventing a new way to measure anything.

Brand-rating apps score the brand, which can be useful, but they don’t test garments. Label-scanner apps read what the label says, but the label is the very thing in question.

Lynen picks up where both leave off: independent laboratory testing of the actual garment, shown right next to what the label claims.

Not yet, but it’s coming. Pilling, when loose fibers roll into little fuzz balls, and fading are the two most common ways clothes fail, and the lab tests that predict them already exist. They just aren’t shown at retail.

Wear testing is on its way to verified garments. Where wear-test data exists for a garment, you’ll see it alongside the composition, and coverage will grow the same way verification coverage grows: garment by garment, with your submissions helping set the queue.

Sometimes. A certification logo that comes with a certificate number can be checked in the certifier’s own free database, and it’s worth taking a moment to do that. A logo without a number is really just marketing.

Lynen shows linked certificates on a garment’s record where they exist, alongside our own independent testing.

A discrepancy is a meaningful gap between what the label claims and what testing found. A label that reads 100% cotton against a tested result of 52% polyester is a discrepancy, and so is an undeclared fiber that someone might react to.

Small variances are normal and expected in textile manufacturing, and most regulations allow a tolerance of a few percent. We show you the numbers either way and let you judge for yourself, rather than hiding the result behind a pass or fail badge.

No, and we’re careful not to say that. A discrepancy means the tested garment didn’t match its label. It doesn’t establish intent, and it doesn’t necessarily describe every unit of that product.

What it does tell you is what you’re actually wearing, which is the information you needed in the first place.

Almost certainly not, and that’s normal. Fiber testing is destructive, so labs test representative samples of a product rather than the specific item in your hands.

Fiber content can drift between production runs and factories, so it helps to treat a result as strong evidence about that product rather than a certificate for your individual garment.

Because each one costs real money to test. Building this catalog means running physical lab work garment by garment, so coverage grows steadily rather than all at once.

Submitting garments genuinely helps move the queue along. It’s the clearest signal we get about what people actually want tested.

There are three ways, and they all get you to the same result. You can point your camera at the barcode on the price tag, type the barcode number in by hand, or search by brand or product name.

Manual entry and search exist because tags get creased, store lighting can be tricky, and sometimes the fastest option is simply to type what you know.

Lynen reads EAN and UPC barcodes, which is what nearly every major retailer prints on a clothing price tag. That’s the long number under the stripes.

Care labels sewn into a seam usually don’t carry a scannable barcode, so the price tag or the box is where you’ll find one.

You can submit it. There’s a button on the result screen that carries the barcode straight into a submission form, and we route it to an independent lab for verification.

We’d rather tell you honestly that we don’t have the answer yet than guess at one, because a result you can trust matters more than always having something to show.

Independent fiber testing is a physical laboratory process rather than a database lookup, so it takes weeks rather than minutes. Submissions are prioritized by how many people have asked about the same garment.

The good news is you don’t need to keep checking back. The garment will simply appear in the app once the results are in.

Only to read barcodes. The camera feed is processed right on your phone to find the number under the stripes.

Nothing from the camera is recorded, uploaded, or stored. And if you’d rather not grant access at all, that’s fine, because manual entry does the same job.

A digital product passport is a per-garment record you reach by scanning a tag. It tells you what the garment is made of, where it came from, how to care for it, and what to do with it at the end of its life.

The idea comes from EU product regulation, which is expected to require passports for textiles around 2027. Lynen shows passports in the same place you already check a label claim.

Scan the tag, and if the garment has a passport, the app takes you straight to it. Passports live on the Lynen website, so you can also open one from a plain phone camera, or share the link with someone who doesn’t have the app.

Passport pages are public on purpose. They’re meant to be readable by anyone holding the garment.

A verification result answers one question: does this garment match its label? A passport is the wider record, covering origin, care, durability, recyclability, and the supply chain behind the garment.

When we hold both for a garment, they link to each other so you can move easily between them.

The brand or manufacturer supplies the record, which is how the regulation is designed to work. Where Lynen has independently tested the garment, we show our tested figures alongside the declared ones.

That means you can see a supplier’s own claim and an independent measurement of the same garment in one place, and that independent check is what makes a self-declared record something you can trust.

We collect your email address and name so you can have an account, your scan history so it’s there when you come back, and your skin notes if you choose to write any.

And that’s the whole list. There’s no location tracking, no advertising identifiers, and no tracking you across other apps and websites.

No. We don’t sell personal information, and we don’t share it with advertisers.

Lynen answers to the people who use it, not to advertisers or brands. That’s the only arrangement under which we can tell you the truth about a garment.

No. The camera feed is used to find a barcode number and nothing else, and no image is ever recorded, uploaded, or kept.

Lynen is operated by Lynen Labs LLC, and you can delete your account yourself from inside the app. You won’t need to email anyone or explain why.

In the app, open Account from the bottom navigation, scroll to Delete account, tap it, and confirm. The deletion runs immediately and signs you out.

If you’ve already uninstalled the app, or you can’t sign in, just email support@lynenlabs.com from the address on the account and ask us to delete it. We handle these requests by hand, and we’ll confirm when it’s done.

Here’s what gets deleted: your profile and name, your email address and sign-in identity, every garment you’ve scanned, every analysis Ly wrote for you, any verification requests you submitted, your notifications, and your skin notes. All of it is removed permanently, with no recovery.

One thing to know about what’s kept: if you separately joined the pre-launch waiting list on our website, that email sits in a different list and isn’t touched by account deletion. Just ask us in the same message and we’ll remove it too.

We don’t keep anything else about you. Garment and lab data stays, but it describes products rather than people, and it isn’t linked to your account once the account is gone.

As for timing, your data is removed from live systems right away. Encrypted backups are overwritten on a rolling schedule and cycle out completely within 30 days, and deleted data is never restored to live systems from them.

A small number of service providers, and each one does a single job: hosting and the database, the AI model that writes fabric analyses, and the service that sends account emails.

They act on our instructions and aren’t permitted to use your data for their own purposes. Our privacy policy names each of them.

You can sign in with email and password, or with Continue with Google. On devices and browsers that support them, you can also add a passkey and sign in with your face, fingerprint, or device PIN.

Check your spam or junk folder first. New senders land there more often than anyone would like, and it’s by far the most common cause.

The verification screen in the app has a resend button if you need another email. And if it still doesn’t arrive, write to support@lynenlabs.com and we’ll sort it out.

Your email address just hasn’t been confirmed yet. That confirmation step is what keeps someone from creating an account with an address that isn’t theirs.

Open the link in the confirmation email, and you’ll be able to sign in normally afterward.

Use the password reset link on the sign-in screen. It emails you a link that lets you set a new one.

If you signed up with Google, there’s no Lynen password to change. Google handles that sign-in for you.

Yes. Sign in on each device, and your scan history and skin notes will be right there waiting for you.

Store lighting is usually the culprit. Try moving the tag out of your own shadow, holding the phone eight to ten centimeters away, and giving the autofocus a second to settle. If the tag is creased or curled, flattening it against a surface can help.

If it still won’t read, switch to Manual and type the number in. Manual entry is a fully supported way to use the app.

Force-quit the app and reopen it. That clears a stale cached page, which is the usual cause after an update.

If the problem sticks around, check that your phone has a working connection, then write to us with your phone model and what you were doing.

Please tell us. Write to support@lynenlabs.com with the garment and what you believe is wrong, and we’ll re-check the record and the underlying test data.

If we got something wrong, we’ll correct it and say so. Being willing to admit a mistake is part of what makes verification worth trusting.

Just write to support@lynenlabs.com. A real person reads every message.