My travels to Stockholm, where my son lives, don’t often include any beauty shopping although I have a friend, Kicki, who lives there too and she’s the editor and founder of a beauty magazine so if we meet up, there is plenty of beauty talk and occasional product swaps. However, a slight flight delay and there’s nothing much to do but wander the duty free which is where I picked up the Ida Warg Moisture Shampoo.
This, it turns out, is quite the find. It’s a lovely, lush shampoo that leaves my hair softened and less crispy at the ends – summer has bleached my hair quite significantly this year so the ends tend to go a bit fluffy unless I’m hot on the case. I don’t usually use moisturising shampoos because their common bond is that they’re so hard to rinse out, especially in a hard water area like London. It’s something that I’ve been caught out on when visiting family in both Yorkshire and Scotland where the water is soft and you need a fraction of what you need here – the result has been a massive foam head and a lifetime of rinsing. Urgh. The Ida Warg version has no such issues – it rinses like a dream. The fragrance is ‘fudge’ which had I read that first, I’d have given it a very wide berth indeed but to me it’s more of a coconut scent which is just as well. The brand is very well known for its fragranced haircare and is made in the same factory as Maria Nila – I mean, it’s very similar in texture to Maria Nila but I can’t automatically make the assumption that it is scented Maria Nila. It’s a common brand claim to be ‘made in the same factory as…’ that bears no relevance whatsoever.
In researching the who of Ida Warg, I discovered that Ida Warg is a Swedish fitness influencer/blogger and the haircare line was developed in 2018 by Ida and Swedish beauty distributors, Letsfaceit Nordic. It’s actually very difficult to find the person in this brand as the actual Ida barely gets a mention anywhere, despite being the name of the brand. A quote in the ‘About Ida Warg’ section of their website says this: ‘IDA WARG Beauty was founded in 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden by the Swedish beauty distributor Letsfaceit Nordic AB. As of January 2020, the company is independent.’ Where did Ida go? The brand was bought by The Lumene Group (Finnish) in 2023, which itself is owned by the venture capital company, Verdane. My spidey senses are on fire and it’s giving me RMK vibes where Rumiko, the make-up artist face of and founder, was totally written out of the story – you’ll only ever find her name on old blogs now.
So, I couldn’t leave it – what started as a simple post about a nice shampoo has taken quite the turn and I’ve been down several rabbit holes. So, it appears that the real Ida Warg co-owned the brand with the distributor. She moved to Spain and while in Spain attended a ‘Pimps & Ho’s’ party which upset absolutely everyone and sales of the brand dipped, not least because it came fast on the heels of attending a fund raising event for human trafficking. That’s a documented fact which was reported on in the Swedish press, but it seems that it was one of several faux pas that affected the brand negatively. It looks as though the distributors made moves to side-line Ida to the name of the brand only, while she still co-owned the brand. Now that Ida Warg (the brand) has been sold she has no input whatsoever as far as I understand it. I really had no idea, when I was whiling away an hour in Stockholm airport that there would be far more to my purchase!
Bottom line is, if you like fragranced shampoos and conditioners, these are very good indeed if your hair runs to dry, especially how much the hair is softened. There’s a duo here that’s on offer for EU 25 HERE – I’m assuming they ship to the UK if they’re pricing in Euros and the UK isn’t on their ‘unable to ship list’.
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