Draft:Desi Perkins

• Comment: In accordance with Wikipedia's Conflict of interest guideline, I disclose that I have a conflict of interest regarding the subject of this article. Stevenperkins (talk) 22:54, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

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Desi Perkins (born March 3, 1987) is an American beauty content creator, makeup artist, and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, California. She is known for her makeup tutorials on YouTube and for founding the eyewear brand DEZI in 2020 and the skincare line Dezi Skin in 2021.

Early life

Perkins grew up in Los Angeles and has three brothers. She has spoken publicly about her Mexican-American heritage and has described her father as an early influence. She spent several years working as a freelance makeup artist before moving into online content creation.

Her YouTube channel launched in 2013, though the event she most often credits as her actual start came slightly earlier — a Halloween makeup video she made for her husband that spread unexpectedly online in 2012. Recounting the episode in a 2025 Glossy interview, she said: "It all started with a last-minute Halloween makeup tutorial that went viral back in 2012. My husband Steven needed a last-minute costume, and I had just discovered that people were posting tutorials online." The channel grew steadily from there through makeup tutorials, celebrity-inspired looks, and lifestyle vlogs. By 2025 it had accumulated over four million subscribers, though figures cited in various sources range from 3.2 to 4.4 million depending on the date of publication.

Before launching her own brands, Perkins worked on collaborative products with Benefit Cosmetics, Dose of Colors, and Quay Australia, among others.

Career

Content creation

Perkins began posting makeup work on Instagram to attract freelance clients before launching a self-titled YouTube channel on August 30, 2013. Her debut video was a makeup tutorial. She gained significant attention through an eyebrow tutorial video and content inspired by celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian. She has collaborated with beauty brands including Benefit Cosmetics and Dose of Colors.

As of 2025, her YouTube channel has accumulated over 4 million subscribers. She has a combined social media following exceeding 7 million across platforms.

DEZI

Perkins launched DEZI in July 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The brand sells sunglasses and optical frames, mostly in the $75 to $100 range, positioned as an alternative to both mass-market options and designer frames at several times the price. It started as a direct-to-consumer operation and later secured a retail deal with Nordstrom, though the precise timing of that partnership — late 2023 by most accounts — has not been extensively documented in press coverage.

In early 2024, DEZI put out a limited collaboration with beauty creator Monet McMichael. WWD covered the release at launch. Later that year, Forbes mentioned the collaboration in a broader piece about social media creators building commercial enterprises.

Dezi Skin

Dezi Skin launched in April 2021 with a single product: a vitamin C serum called "Claro Que C." The formula included fruit extracts — plum, mango, guava, acai, and others — sourced from Mexico, a choice Perkins described as connected to her background. "Being a woman and a Latinx founder makes my brand different because I infuse a lot of my culture into the DNA of the company," she told Glossy in 2023. Product names across the line also use Spanish, a pattern she has said is intentional rather than incidental.

Glossy first covered the brand's launch in 2022, and the publication returned to it again when Dezi Skin entered Sephora in 2025. The Sephora launch began online only. Daniel Kiyoi, an indie beauty brand developer who worked on Dezi Skin and was quoted independently in the Glossy piece, suggested that Perkins's unusually long direct-to-consumer runway — around five years before approaching a major retailer — distinguished her from other creator-founded brands that had struggled to sustain Sephora placement after earlier, faster launches. Among the Latinx-founded brands at Sephora at the time of the launch were Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty and Babba Rivera's Ceremonia.

Recognition

Dot.LA included Perkins in its "Behind Her Empire" interview series in May 2022. Sports Illustrated Swimsuit ran a profile focused on DEZI's market positioning in early 2025. Refinery29 listed DEZI among Latina-owned sunglasses brands in a 2025 shopping guide.

Personal life

Perkins married Steven Perkins, a photographer and graphic designer, in July 2012. The couple have two children: a son, and a daughter.

References

Category:1987 births Category:Living people Category:American YouTubers Category:People from Los Angeles Category:YouTubers from California