Everything worth asking

Lynen tells you what your clothes are actually made of. You scan a garment’s barcode or tap its NFC tag, and we show you what the label claims next to what independent testing found.

When those two things disagree, we say so plainly, and we show you where the testing data came from so you can check it yourself.

Usually not because someone set out to lie. A fibre content label passes through spinning mills, fabric suppliers, cut-and-sew factories, and brand paperwork before it reaches a printer. Substitutions happen mid-order when a fibre runs short. Blends drift between production runs. Paperwork gets copied forward from a previous season.

The result is the same either way: the label on the rack does not always describe the garment on the hanger. Regulators in several countries test samples each year and consistently find mislabelled fibre content.

While Lynen is in early access, every feature is free, including Ly’s personal fabric analysis on every scan.

If that changes we will tell you before it changes, not after.

Yes, for the app. An account is what lets your scan history follow you and lets Ly read the skin notes you have chosen to save.

If you only want to see how it works, the website has a demo you can open in your browser with no sign-up. It uses sample data and is clearly marked as such.

iPhone and Android. Barcode scanning works on any phone with a rear camera. NFC tag reading needs an NFC-capable phone, which covers most models from the last several years.

If your phone has no NFC chip, the app does not show you a scan button that cannot work. It tells you and points you at the camera or manual entry instead.

Three ways, and they all reach the same result. Point your camera at the barcode on the price tag. Tap your phone against an NFC tag where a retailer has embedded one. Or type the barcode number by hand.

Manual entry exists because tags get creased, lighting in shops is bad, and sometimes the fastest thing is just to read the numbers.

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

Care labels sewn into a seam usually do not carry a scannable barcode. The price tag or the box is where you will find one.

Submit it. There is 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 would rather tell you we do not have the answer than guess at one. An honest blank is more useful than a confident invention.

Independent fibre testing is a physical laboratory process, not a database lookup, so it takes weeks rather than minutes. Submissions are prioritised by how many people have asked about the same garment.

You do not need to check back. The garment appears in the app once results are in.

The most common reason is that the garment has no NFC tag. They are still rare, and mostly appear on premium or sustainability-focused lines.

Beyond that: NFC must be enabled in your phone settings, the tag needs to be within a couple of centimetres, and on most phones the antenna sits near the top of the handset rather than the middle. If nothing happens, use the camera or type the barcode.

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

Nothing from the camera is recorded, uploaded, or stored. If you would rather not grant access at all, manual entry does the same job.

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. If we cannot show you where a figure came from, we do not show you the figure.

Accredited textile labs use standard methods to separate and weigh the fibres in a sample. Chemical dissolution removes one fibre type at a time so the rest can be weighed. Microscopy identifies fibres 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 are not inventing a measurement.

A meaningful gap between what the label claims and what testing found. A label reading 100% cotton against a tested result of 52% polyester is a discrepancy. So is an undeclared fibre 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, rather than hiding a result behind a pass or fail badge.

No, and we are careful not to say that. A discrepancy means this tested garment did not match its label. It does not establish intent, and it does not necessarily describe every unit of that product.

What it does tell you is what you are wearing, which is the thing you actually needed to know.

Almost certainly not. Testing is destructive, so a lab tests representative samples of a product, not the specific item in your hands.

Fibre content can drift between production runs and factories. Treat a result as strong evidence about that product, not a certificate for your individual garment.

Because each one costs real money to test. Building this catalogue is a matter of running physical lab work garment by garment, so coverage grows steadily rather than all at once.

Submitting garments genuinely moves the queue. It is the clearest signal we get about what people actually want tested.

No. Brands do not pay for placement, cannot buy a better result, and cannot remove a result they dislike.

The moment that changes, the product is worthless. A verification service that can be bought is just advertising with extra steps.

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

Ly works from the tested composition, not from the label, which is the whole point.

No. Ly gives general wellness information drawn from published research. It is not a diagnosis, not a treatment plan, and not a substitute for a clinician.

If you have a diagnosed condition or a known allergy, your doctor or dermatologist knows your situation and Ly does not. Take the analysis with you when you ask them, but let them make the call.

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

Ly reads them when writing your analysis so the answer is about your skin rather than a stranger’s. Leave it blank and your analyses simply stay general. Nothing else in the app changes.

You. They are stored on your account, they are never sold, and they are not shown to other users.

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

Yes. Ly summarises published research, and research is uneven, sometimes contested, and rarely about your exact situation.

Treat it as a well-read starting point rather than a verdict. That is why every analysis shows what it drew on and ends by pointing you to a clinician for anything diagnosed.

No, and this is one of the most common assumptions worth putting down. Wool is a natural fibre and one of the more frequent irritants. Cotton can be grown, dyed, and finished with chemistry that matters more to your skin than the fibre itself.

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

A digital product passport is a per-garment record you reach by scanning a tag: what it 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 out of EU product regulation, which is moving toward requiring passports for textiles later this decade. Lynen shows passports in the same place you already check a label claim.

Scan the tag. If the garment has a passport, the app takes you 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 does not have the app.

A passport page is public on purpose. It is 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 — origin, care, durability, recyclability, and the supply chain behind it.

Where we hold both for a garment, they link to each other.

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, which is the only way a self-declared record becomes trustworthy.

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

That is the list. No location tracking, no advertising identifiers, no tracking you across other apps and websites.

No. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it with advertisers.

The people who pay for Lynen are the people who use Lynen. That is 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. No image is recorded, uploaded, or kept.

From the Account screen in the app. Deleting an account removes your profile, your scan history, and your skin notes.

You do not have to email anyone or explain why.

A small number of service providers, each doing one 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 are not permitted to use your data for their own purposes. The privacy policy names them.

Email and password, or 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 this is by far the most common cause.

The verification screen in the app has a resend button if you need another. If it still does not arrive, write to hello@lynen.app and we will sort it out.

Because the email address has not been confirmed yet. That confirmation step is what stops someone creating an account with an address that is not theirs.

Open the link in the confirmation email and sign in normally afterwards.

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 is no Lynen password to change — Google handles that sign-in.

Yes. Sign in on each device and your scan history and skin notes are there.

Shop lighting is usually the culprit. Move the tag out of your own shadow, hold the phone eight to ten centimetres away, and give autofocus a second to settle. Creased or curled tags are worth flattening against a surface.

If it still will not read, switch to Manual and type the number. It is not a workaround, it is a supported way to use the app.

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

If it persists, check that your phone has a working connection, then write to us with your phone model and what you were doing.

Tell us. Write to hello@lynen.app with the garment and what you believe is wrong, and we will re-check the record and the underlying test data.

If we got something wrong we will correct it and say so. A verification service that cannot admit an error is not a verification service.

hello@lynen.app. A person reads it.