Jennifer Kiều Anh Doan co-owns KIỀU Store, an online boutique featuring garments by emerging Vietnamese designers in Melbourne, Australia. Her mother, Đại Nguyen, worked as a garment outworker in her living room after migrating to Australia from post-war Saigon in 1991. This historical context is part of a broader account of underpaid Vietnamese migrants who constituted a majority of fashion outworkers in Australia in the 1990s. Doan views her engagement with modern Vietnamese fashion as a connection to her culture and a way to acknowledge her mother's experiences.
Vietnam's fashion industry has gained recognition in recent years. Young Vietnamese creatives in Australia, including Ms. Doan, are contributing to this momentum by showcasing Vietnamese labels and celebrating craftsmanship through community-driven pop-up stores. Ms. Doan, who has lived between Vietnam and Australia, founded KIỀU Store in 2024 with Minh Nguyen. They connected over shared experiences as "Việt Kiều," or overseas Vietnamese. The store aims to build a community in Melbourne, using fashion as a bridge between their cultural backgrounds.
KIỀU Store's pop-up events in Melbourne include traditional Vietnamese elements like street signs, iced coffee, and homemade food, fostering discussions about Vietnamese heritage and migration. Vietnam's fashion industry began its revival after economic reforms in the late 1980s led to the establishment of garment factories. By the early 2000s, a growing middle class supported local fashion and design talent.
Ms. Doan attributes Vietnam's contemporary global fashion standing to designers' experimental approaches, which she links to ancestral resilience. She states that modern Vietnamese fashion reflects the country's reinvention post-war, with traditional garments like the áo dài being re-imagined. She notes that pop-up initiatives such as KIỀU Store and Sydney's Som Space are challenging perceptions of Asia primarily as a fast-fashion production hub by highlighting Vietnamese designers as creative innovators.