Olivia Garden

Most stylists know Olivia Garden before they know they know it. The brushes, the round thermal barrels, the detangling combs that turn up on nearly every salon station, all of it is Olivia Garden, a Belgian brand founded in 1967 with a US division running out of Antioch, California. The shears are the quieter part of the catalog, and that’s exactly why they’re worth a fair look: this is a company that earned its name on tools stylists actually reach for, then extended that into cutting steel.

A real tools house, not a scissor specialist

The distinction matters. Olivia Garden isn’t a boutique forge with one signature pair; it’s a broad professional-tools company that happens to make shears alongside brushes, clips, and styling accessories. The practical upside is sourcing several tool types from a single maker you already trust, and ordering through a supply chain you’re probably already using. The trade-off is that the shears aren’t trying to compete with hand-finished Japanese flagships, and they’re not priced as if they were.

Range and steel

The line covers cutting scissors, thinning shears, and a dedicated left-handed model in the SilkCut family, spanning several price points from student-friendly up to more capable pro models. The one worth pointing at is the Cara, built with VG-10, a cobalt-rich Japanese stainless the brand finishes to around 62 Rockwell. That’s a genuinely good steel, the same grade you’ll find in shears costing several times more, which makes the upper Olivia Garden models punch above their tier on metallurgy even if the finishing is more production-line than artisan.

Pricing sits in the budget band, generally under $100, which is the brand’s real argument. For a student building a first kit, or a stylist who wants a reliable backup pair without a premium outlay, this is an easy and low-risk entry point.

Buying

You can order direct from store.oliviagarden.com, and the shears are stocked by SalonCentric, one of the largest professional distributor networks in the US — so for many salons the brand is already on the order form. For the wider field of makers, see the brands directory.