Lady Miss Kier

Her initial look relied on revamped and exaggerated Retro style 1960s fashion.

Her signature look was a zip-up catsuit, platform shoes and flipped hair-do.

Kierin Magenta Kirby (born August 15, 1963), known professionally as Lady Miss Kier, is an American singer, songwriter and DJ.

Lady Miss Kier was the vocalist for the band Deee-Lite.

She supports causes such as LGBTQ rights, women's rights, human rights, the environmental movement, the anti-war movement and the get out the vote movement.

Kirby was born in Youngstown, Ohio.

As a child, she lived in Pittsburgh, Virginia Beach, and Washington, D.C. At the age of 17, she moved to New York City to study fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology but she was disillusioned by the teachers and dropped out immediately.

When she dropped out, she started to design and make her own eccentric disco-inspired clothes that she then sold to people she met at nightclubs.

In 1982, Kirby met Ukrainian-born Dmitry Brill ("Supa DJ Dmitry") and designed, made, and sold him silver platform boots and a glitter blue spacesuit, for his band, Shazork.

In 1986, she began experimenting with singing and writing music with Brill to form the band Deee-Lite.

Shortly after their first show in 1986, Brill was introduced to Towa Tei, a Japan-raised Korean DJ.

Several years later, Kirby and Brill invited him to join their band.

Combining Kirby's vocal and writing talents with Brill's sampling skills and Tei's techno mixing, the three formed the band Deee-Lite.

They had performances every month, with Kier designing new costumes for each one.

She continued to make a living as a waitress and go-go dancer until the band signed a seven-album deal with Elektra Records.

Deee-Lite's sound was a mix of house music, techno and electronic dance music.

Deee-Lite shot to stardom in 1990 with the release of their first album World Clique and the hit "Groove Is in the Heart".

In the late 1990s, she collaborated on the albums of Bootsy Collins, I Kamanchi and A Guy Called Gerald.

At the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, Deee-Lite was nominated for several awards, including Video of the Year, Best Dance Video, Best New Artist, Best Breakthrough Video, and Best Editing in a Video.

Kirby wrote, produced, and performed the bulk of the band's songs.

Known as much for their outrageous personae and costumes as for their music, the three took on larger-than-life alter-egos: Super DJ Dmitri, Jungle DJ Towa Tei, and Lady Miss Kier.

Kirby designed and created the look of the band, as well as much of the artwork accompanying the band's albums and marketing material.

In 1992, the band released their second album, Infinity Within, a politically charged work.

The band functionally broke up during the writing of their third album in 1993, but Kirby and Brill decided to finish the project and tour together to promote the album before going their separate ways.

Their third album Dewdrops in the Garden was released in 1994.

Neither of the two follow-up albums matched the commercial success of the debut album.

The second and third albums were hampered by difficulties with the label, which refused to promote, support touring, or fund contractual videos.

Deee-lite disbanded in 1995 after Brill and Kirby's relationship fractured.

In 1995, after quitting the band, Lady Miss Kier moved to London where she began touring as a disc jockey and learning the technical end of production, recording, and engineering.

In 1996, a remix album was released.

A greatest hits album was released in 2001.

In 2002, she contributed an exclusive solo track called "I'm Not Staying at Home" to the compilation Straight Up & Dirty.

Since going solo, she has featured and co-written with artists such as Full Cycle, George Clinton, Walter "Junie" Morrison, A Guy Called Gerald, Apollo Heights, and several P-Funk luminaries.

Outside of the studio, she showcased her live performances with new material for various music, film, and art festivals, as well as headlining several gay pride events worldwide.

In 2005, motivated by the invasion of Iraq, she began internationally performing live new unreleased music, including the DFA release covering George Clinton's anti–war song "Bullet Proof".

She has headlined numerous festivals and gay pride events as well as opened for James Brown's last tour at the Good Vibrations festival in Australia.

Kirby has received the following recognition in the fashion industry:

She performed as a disc jockey at clubs and music festivals including Coachella Festival (2007), Berlin's Berghain (2010) and Sydney Mardi Gras (2012), as well as radio programs such as East Village Radio and Sirius XM.

In 2012, she began performing a Deee-Lite tribute for various occasions, including the 2013 Paris Fashion Week for Kenzo as well as a tribute to New York City disc jockey Mark Kamins at Santos Party House.

In 2018, the Netflix series Big Mouth used her song Groove Is In The Heart for an abortion sequence.