Aside from Jeffree Star, there is no one in the internet beauty world who is as controversial as Doe Deere, known to most as the founder of Lime Crime. Her connection to the brand is without a doubt the number one cause for Lime Crime's 10-year infamy and, arguably, its mainstream success, too.
To be a person this polarizing, you've got to have a lot of personality, strong branding, and a very questionable past. Deere has all three of those in spades. What makes the internet love and hate her so passionately? Here are just 27 tidbits of information on her for you:
Her real name is Xenia Vorotova.
She was born in June 1981 — that makes her 37, and a Gemini.
She's originally from Izhevsk, Russia and speaks both Russian and English.
She moved to the US at the age of 17.
She claimed to have studied fashion at New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology.
She currently lives in a two-story victorian house in the Los Angeles area.
She's married to Mark Dumbleton, who helped her co-found Lime Crime.
She says they've been together for nearly 20 years.
In the days of Myspace, she was in a "fairy tale rock band" called Sky Salt.
She later had a short solo music career starting in 2008.
Before she launched the beauty brand of the same name, Deere used the moniker Lime Crime to sell DIY clothing on eBay in the early '00s.
Shortly after launching Lime Crime as a makeup company in 2007, she dressed as Adolf Hitler for Halloween for a reason she wouldn't reveal until years later.
Earlier this year, Deere addressed the costume to a commenter on Instagram with the following: "As far as my costume goes, yes, I dressed up as Hitler 12 years ago to push back on a crippling fear of Nazis. I’m a proud Russian Jewish immigrant who worked hard and is grateful for everything I have.”
Lime Crime's global general manager Kim Walls also recently explained Deere's costume choice to Racked: “When she came to the US as a teenager, she didn’t have the cultural references and understandings of things that a typical American has. Her understanding of Halloween was that this was a time when people dress up as monsters. And in her life and in her history and in her heritage, the biggest monster was Hitler, so she put on a Hitler-like costume and thought she was doing something American, and boy, did that backfire.”
Her questionable actions around that time were what inspired many of the multiple online communities that are dedicated to documenting her and her brand's many controversies.
For instance, in response to backlash from Lime Crime's China Doll palette, she called accusations of cultural appropriation "a little silly."
"What is cultural appropriation anyway?" she wrote on her blog in 2012. "To summarize, it’s the borrowing of certain cultural elements by another cultural group. To be honest, I find the notion a little silly. Not all that pertains to race has to be racist, just like not every cultural reference has to be met with opposition. What matters is intent. As an artist and a human being, I have the right to be inspired by and wanting to explore, adapt, and otherwise express myself through things I find wonderful."
For around seven years she created her own custom hair colors that she would later turn into Lime Crime's Unicorn Hair dyes.
She's had every hair color on the rainbow spectrum, but she's most known for this magenta hue that's now a Unicorn Hair dye named Pony.
She's a natural redhead.
That's her on the front of the Venus palette.
Her mother might as well be her twin.
She collects vintage hats.
She also has a mad habit for extravagant high-heeled shoes.
She has no tattoos, but did get her belly button pierced in 2015.
She has a cat named Puffy Fluffles.
And another cat named Chester.
She has a knack for giving antique furniture "dollhouse makeovers."
