27 Crazy Facts About Lime Crime Founder Doe Deere
Instagram/doedeereAside 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:
She later had a short solo music career starting in 2008.
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.”
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."
