- Joined
- Jul 5, 2014
Meet Xenia Vorotova, aka Doe Deere. Doe Deere is the founder/ceo of Lime Crime, a (in)famous cosmetics company known for its "unique" colors, terrible customer service, and...using illegal, unsafe ingredients that give the wearer chemical burns.
Why is Doe a cow, you ask? So many reasons.
So. Many. Reasons.
For example, there was the time when Doe sold a customer a dress hemmed with duct tape, then when the buyer was rightfully angry, she asserted that it was the buyer's fault for buying the shoddy merchandise. Then, we have the time when she threatened to sue a 13 year old for using her images. (source).
Fast forward, to 2007, when Doe had an "auction" to benefit a local animal shelter. Of course, she fails to name the specific shelter the funds would go to. Another auction, another scam--this time, Doe says she raised over $200 for the Brooklyn Shelter. Fun fact: there is no shelter with that name in New York City, where Doe resided. Some people reported the scam auction to PayPal, eventually leading to Doe's PP account being shut down.
Later in 2007, Doe justifies wearing fur, in July. A few months later, in November, she posted a blog entry where she "taught" children to "not be cruel to animals." (Source is in the ODDD tumblr; original blog posts have been deleted.)
Doe single-white-female's the owner of Sugarpill cosmetics, Amy Doan, who was a former friend. She copied Amy's personal style and to this day creates obvious dupes of Sugarpill products, acting like they are sooper unique, guise. (and then there's the time that Amy's twitter was hacked and just so happened to retweet tweets originally posted by Lime Crime. Hmmm.)
Speaking of the makeup itself...Lime Crime's original products, loose mineral pigments/eyeshadows. Let's talk about those for a second. Super bright, pigmented and pretty, with Such Unique Colors!
...yeah, about that. Doe actually just repackaged mica powders (which are an ingredient, not a final product) from TKB without adding anything extra to make it a unique formula. When called out on this, Doe asserts that TKB was copying Lime Crime. TKB was making their product long before Lime Crime, but sure, Doe. Okay. (Here, have another comparison post. Oh, and more side-by-side comparison photos.)
Then there was the time that Doe threatened a reviewer with legal action if she didn't remove or retract her honest, unbiased (and not glowing) review of LC products.
And lest you think her fuckery is all in the past, Doe Deere let the security certificate on the Lime Crime website expire. This predictably ended badly. Many customers were left with their debit card/credit card/paypal information stolen to the tune of thousands of dollars. Oh, and it took Doe months to acknowledge this, and anybody who brought it up on any Lime Crime pages (fb, instagram, twitter) found their comments deleted and blocked from posting any further on those pages. When Lime Crime finally addressed concerns, the result left much to be desired. Of course, no mention that the security was allowed to expire in the first place was mentioned in any of these posts, nor in a letter sent to customers months after the fact. Because that would be admitting fault.
Doe also continues to use ingredients like beeswax and carmine, all while saying that her products are vegan and cruelty-free. Ever the definition of a good businesswoman, she calls customers "dumbass(es)" when they point out that her products aren't actually vegan.
Oh, and if you wear one of the Velvetines (liquid matte lipstick)? Expect chemical burns due to unsafe ingredients (such as ferric ferrocyanide--which is very dangerous, and easily ingested because you put lipstick on your damn mouth). Lime Crime finally got slapped with the FDA attention (and warning) that it so rightly deserved. Here's some more info on the ingredient fuckery, for those interested. And of course, Lime Crime's response to the FDA was less than stellar. It was a "labelling error," so the packaging was changed to indicate there was no ferric ferrocyanide in the products, according to Doe.
(I apologize that some of the things in this post are not sourced--many of them were on blogs and accounts that have since been deleted (one of them being deleted after Doe threatened legal action), but I've followed Doe Deere's cow-ness for years and everything in this post is true.)
(And this article is a fantastic insight as to why Doe Deere is the absolute worst.)
