In a boutique beauty salon in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, women recline on massage chairs as their toenails are filed, buffed, polished and carefully painted with a colour of their choice.She's one of many regular clients at Allure Beauty Room in Blackburn, where customers can get everything from a mani-pedi combo or acrylic nails, to just a simple buff and polish.
He said the Vietnamese migrant community in Australia was beginning to feel employment pressure during the decline of the once-booming textile industry when the country began shifting from a manufacturing economy to a services-based one."I came to Australia as a boat person with my wife and young daughter," says Mr Le, who is now retired.
Hollywood actress Tippi Hedren helped to train Vietnamese refugees in the US in nail care so they could find employment. By the mid-2010s, Mr Le had 80 nail salons, predominantly in shopping centres, across Melbourne and in regional Victoria."It was very different for people and we had new technology like air-brushing nail art."When Vietnamese refugees first arrived in Australia in large numbers during the 1980s, many worked low-income jobs in factories and clothing warehouses, according to migration scholar Lan Anh Hoang from the University of Melbourne.
"And if you go to Eastern Europe or other parts of the world now, you see the same thing, even in Singapore.