Austin-Based Nail Artists Preserve Chicano Culture Amidst Gentrification

Abigail Tovar (left) and Lisset Velasquez (right).

Nail artists Lisset Velasquez and Abigail Tovar started off as coworkers in a beauty salon. 

Freshly licensed from cosmetology school, Velasquez would shadow and train with Tovar. Work was full of sitting beside each other and only exchanging a couple words throughout shifts. Until one day, Tovar approached Velasquez with a question. 

Tovar asked, “Hey, have you ever thought of opening your own salon or your own place?” Velasquez replied with, “Yeah, I actually have.” 

Later on, Velasquez contemplated just how perfect this moment was.

“I just never knew when the time was right [to start a business] and I felt like speaking about it with Abigail [and only] then [did it feel] right,” Velasquez said.

From the moment Velasquez confirmed with Tovar, their workplace friendship blossomed and quickly led to the start of their own nail salon. Every day since then, the two spent discussing contracts and figuring out potential business names in Tovar’s kitchen. 

“We wanted to do it right,” Tovar said. “Opening a business with somebody else is risky, especially since we knew each other, but we didn’t truly know each other. We were very passionate about what we wanted to do, so we really wanted to go about it the right way.”

This involved two weeks of Tovar and Velasquez putting in notices, writing their own contracts, doing research, filing and LLC, choosing color schemes, and among many other details. With that, Dope Culture was born in 2021.

Before all of this was a possibility, Tovar got started doing freelance makeup and hair shortly after she received her license through cosmetology school. Afterward, a friend convinced her to work at Milk + Honey Spa, where she was tested to try something new: nails. Eventually, she decided to leave and was hired at another salon, where she met Velasquez.

“I saw this other nail salon that did a lot of nail art, and I was like ‘Oh you know let me just try it,’ and I fell in love,” Tovar said. “I loved painting and have always been in the art scene, so I just fell in love with nail art.”

Velasquez, on the other hand, followed in the footsteps of her mother, who was a cosmetologist.

She remembers looking through her mother’s nail polish collection and watching her dye hair. Throughout community college, Velasquez found herself wanting to find a career where she could be more “creative.” 

“I didn’t know what to do, and I wanted to get my nails done at the time, but I didn’t have the funds,” Velasquez said. “I had this friend who said, ‘Why don’t you just learn to do them yourself?’” So she did, and scored her first job where Tovar was working.

When creating Dope Culture, Tovar and Velasquez fixated on embracing their similar styles and keeping their culture alive as Latinas. The ongoing gentrification of Chicano Park in the Austin neighborhood of East Cesar Chavez is one of the things that inspired them when creating their business. 

As an Austinite, Tovar grew up visiting her grandma’s house just down the road from Chicano Park. She describes it as a one-story barbie-looking house with the stairs coming down the hill, very old-fashioned.

But now, a modern style home sits next door to her grandmother’s house. Tovar says the scenery and “family-oriented” community has changed ever since the city began growing more. 

“People are losing their homes, they’re getting bought out, they can’t afford taxes, it’s just sad,” Tovar said. “I know people who have lost their homes because of this and because they don’t feel comfortable there anymore.”

Although Tovar and Velasquez’s nail art specialty is in incorporating Chicano and Hispanic elements, they dabble in a little of everything. They both hope to ultimately deliver creativity in a client’s final design. At the core, though, their goal is to stay true and love themselves and to remember where one comes from. 

“[New residents] don’t want us in a space,” Velasquez said. “But you know what? We’re going to take up space no matter what. So here we are — that's why we named it Dope Culture.”