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.
"In summer, I go with a red colour, feet and hands," says 73-year-old Frances Burnett, smiling.
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.
The salon also offers a range of beauty treatments such as spray tanning, facials and waxing.
Burnett doesn't recall getting her nails done at a salon before a wave of Vietnamese migrants arrived in Australia during the 80s, let alone every three weeks, as she has for the past five years at Allure.
"It's a bit of a luxury I can afford," she says. "And, I love the gorgeous girls working here."
The owner, Tammy Nguyen, who is a second-generation Vietnamese Australian, acknowledges the Vietnamese community's cultural and business impact on the billion-dollar nail salon industry.
Ms Nguyen's staff are also Vietnamese, which has become a hallmark of the industry.
"If you've been to a nail salon, most likely it's Vietnamese-owned," Ms Nguyen says.
"We did make it a financially accessible treatment for everyday women. Before that, it was super expensive.
"They (Vietnamese-owned nail salons) are a bit of a pop-culture thing across the world and it's ingrained in our society, which is pretty cool."
The market size, measured by revenue, of the personal waxing and nail salon industry in Australia was $1.6 billion in 2023, according to research by IBISWorld.
How Dung Le got into the beauty business
It was a call from a friend in California that inspired Dung Le, the founder of popular nail franchise Hollywood Nails and Odyssey Nails, to open his first nail salon in 1998 at Highpoint Shopping Centre in Melbourne's west.
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.
Many people, like Mr Le, were looking to pivot into new industries.
"I came to Australia as a boat person with my wife and young daughter," says Mr Le, who is now retired.
"We worked many jobs, but since 1996 the textile industry went down because the government exported [the work] to other countries, so I had to create a new job."
Mr Le's friend told him that in the United States, Vietnamese migrants were gaining a foothold in the nail salon industry and entrepreneurs in the community were cashing in.
"It was really popular in the US. We just copied the idea from them," Mr Le says.
The success of the Vietnamese-American-owned nail salons is often credited to Hollywood actress Tippi Hedren, best known for starring in Alfred Hitchco*ck's The Birds.
When the actress and human rights advocate visited a refugee camp in California in 1975, a group of Vietnamese women were mesmerised by her perfectly manicured nails.
Hedren decided to fly out her personal manicurist, Dusty Coots, to teach the women a new skill, which she believed could help them adjust to life in a new country.
"We were trying to find vocations for them … I brought in seamstresses and typists — any way for them to learn something. And they loved my fingernails," Hedren told the BBC in 2015.
Mr Le, nicknamed "Mr Hollywood", followed in the footsteps of those like Hedren.
He was one of the first people in the Vietnamese and wider Australian community to franchise nail salons and train staff in Australia.
Mr Le owned a registered training organisation to upskill migrant women to work in nail salons, teaching them the basics of the craft and how to use new nail technology coming out of the US.
By the mid-2010s, Mr Le had 80 nail salons, predominantly in shopping centres, across Melbourne and in regional Victoria.
"When we first opened, it was very busy — long lines and so many people," Mr Le says.
"It was very different for people and we had new technology like air-brushing nail art."
Nail salons one of Vietnamese migrants''main sources of income'
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.
"It was just after Australia scrapped the white Australia migration policy, and there was a lot of apprehension but there was also a lot of sympathy … I think the Australian public at that time was also very compassionate about the refugees," says Dr Hoang, who has researched Vietnamese migration for more than 20 years.
Dr Hoang said the benefit of the nail salon industry was it gave Vietnamese migrants, particularly women, who faced challenges in speaking English and lacked the education to access higher-paying jobs, an opportunity to work within their community and make a decent living.
"Nail salons have become one of the main income generators for Vietnamese migrants in the US, UK and then obviously Australia," she says.
"And if you go to Eastern Europe or other parts of the world now, you see the same thing, even in Singapore.
"The Vietnamese in Australia are among the least proficient in English … so the nail salon is very suitable. You don't need to communicate as much and you only need basic English.
"And because much of the income is in cash, it can be super lucrative."
Dr Hoang says the hard work of the first Vietnamese refugees to resettle in Australia can be seen in the success of the second generation today.
"Many have become middle-class professionals," she says.
An upgrade from the humble strip shop salon
For owners like Tammy Nguyen, her establishment is a far cry from the stereotypical strip shop nail salons known for their fast-paced environment and high client turnaround.
Ms Nguyen says hers is a modern version of the salons she grew up with.
It incorporates the efficiency and affordability of the typical nail salon but with a sleek modern design and "day spa" feel.
"I want it to be an affordable thing for women, but I want it to be a good experience, and I don't think those things should be [mutually exclusive]," she says.
She is also passionate about providing work-life balance for her staff and good pay and conditions, which she says have been a wider industry problem.
"The nail industry can be historically notorious for not having the best working conditions," she says.
"I think it has come a long way since those days."
She says her salon and the industry more generally has allowed older women, who would otherwise have been locked out of employment, to find suitable and flexible employment.
One of those women is employee Tina Nguyen, who is in her 60s and transitioned from her 30-year career as a seamstress to become a nail technician.
"My English is not the best but I do enjoy talking to clients and the work I do," Ms Nguyen says.
She also says the job's flexibility has allowed her to spend more time with her grandchildren.
Mr Le says this is what he hopes his legacy in establishing nail salons in Australia will be remembered for.
"It makes me proud as a Vietnamese to see many of my own community open their own stores and learn about nails."
