Julia Ballardt and Nico Verhaegen met at the Royal Academy of Fine Art of Antwerp. Soon after graduation, both interned at Givenchy, Julia in womenswear and Nico in menswear. After moving to a winemaker’s village in southwest Germany, Ballardt ’s hometown, the couple launched Milk of Lime. Since then, the brand has earned a reputation for craft-focused, well-considered, poetic designs and solid storytelling points.
Milk of Lime Special: In Conversation With Designers Julia Ballardt and Nico Verhaegen
Last September, Milk of Lime spring/summer 2025 collection, ‘CURRENT,’ became a highlight at the Berlin Fashion Week. I had a conversation with Julia Ballardt and Nico Verhaegen, the co-founders of the brand.
How is it to live in a village, away from the cities where everything seems to happen, a bit detached from the fashion industry?
Nico: Often, for this industry, fashion is considered the most important thing you do. I find it quite grounding not to be surrounded by so many other people working in fashion. It is just clothes in the end.
Julia: It puts things into perspective. You tend to lose a connection to the high fashion world a bit, but as long as you cultivate your channels, the little doors that you can tap into, it makes a good balance. You still feel that you have a normal life.
When I google Milk of Lime, I see the link to your website and a Wikipedia page about a chemical. What is it?
Nico: Milk of lime (calcium hydroxide) is an agent used in the leather tanning process. We are both people who work from the material, so we wanted to name the brand after something related to the process.
Julia: We also wanted to have some placeholder name to keep ourselves distant because otherwise, you as a person basically become a brand.
What was your starting point for the ‘Current’? Could you guide me through your creative process from getting the central idea to building the story around it?
Julia: We found the book about weather predictions for farmers at a flea market shortly after we released our first collection. We put it aside, yet still, this book got so much into our heads that we thought, “weather what is that for a topic?” Sometimes, it happens that you find something interesting, and it kind of sticks with you. Even if you have another idea for the collection, this thing you found might not let you go. It was a bit the case with this weather theme. Not that I said, “We make 20 weather-inspired looks,” no. Weather is an abstract proposition for the start of a collection, but we trusted it since it intrigued us so much. We asked ourselves how the weather has anything to do with fashion, and then we researched it.
I love that you take inspiration from nature as well. Fashion is often focused too much on culture and everything human-made, and in that sense nature is the opposite of it. Is it something you think of in your work?
Julia: We are inspired by nature. That is true. But I don’t separate it from the cultural references. Nico and I both grew up surrounded by nature. I grew up next to the vineyards, and of course, we had culture here. We had subcultures. We had techno music blasting in the vineyards, you know, 300 friends gathering — I think this is very much culture. So it’s not that we say, “Ah, bye-bye culture, we go to nature, ”but it’s more about how the two are connected. Funny enough, it is for both of us. He grew up in the forest. We understand each other and the sentiments that we have. I think our work is so honest because the story we tell is who we are.
When it comes to selecting materials, what are the criteria you keep in mind, for instance, how the material may age?
Julia: We prefer natural materials. Most are either silk, wool, or cotton, something that has a natural origin. Mainly because we also prefer natural fabrics in our wardrobes. I don’t want to have a shirt that electrifies because it’s made of polyester. You buy clothes and then at some point you notice that you sweat in this sweater but in the other one you don’t, you look at the material and thus learn what you prefer and why. We merely use those materials that we find the nicest to wear and that are just beautiful and able to age beautifully as well. Of course, we do consider whether it will look good in two or ten years.
Nico: We work with deadstock fabrics a lot. You have this thing of finding a material, falling in love with it, but there is, of course, the financial aspect and what is possible within the means we have and where we stand as a business. But that’s the boring part of the process.
There is an accessory that captivated me, the Vagabundle bag. It reminded me of a dreamcatcher. Was that the reference you had?
Julia: No, not at all. We had a collaboration for the wearable makeup pens we made and some other small objects, so we needed something to group them. The idea was to have a handbag with all of these objects, but so that they make the handbag itself. We thought of a handle and a system to clip them; all the objects have their separate hooks, so you can mix and match them. There’s always something vagabondish about our collections.
Nico: Yes, I always imagine people that wear Milk of Lime and I imagine them to go around a lot being collectors because we’re also collectors. They would hang things on their pants for example.
Julia: Yes, also I’m always fascinated by punk jackets when one collects patches over time, so not buying all the 50 patches at once, but more like ‘I went to this concert, I put this there,’ so it is personal. And so it is called the Vagabundle, coming from this vagabond idea. But it’s the first time we hear about a dreamcatcher.
Nico: It’s nice to hear about what other people might see in it; most people would not have a conversation with us to hear about what we meant, so it’s fun for us to know what your first reaction was. I also didn’t think of a dreamcatcher, but now I see what you mean.
Another highlight for me was the jacquard coats.
Nico: We collaborated with Jeroen van den Bogaert to create the tapestries. Each coat represents a part of Beaufort’s scale (12-step spectrum used to describe the strength of wind), stillness to a mild breeze (0-4), turbulence to a stronger gale (5-8), heavy storm to the utter devastation (9-12). For each coat, Beaufort’s scale is printed inside the coats. It kind of reads like a poem.
Julia: It was a good collaboration; we knew he would make the carpets, and we would stitch the coats, but we worked on the motives together. As for the images, you can find a lot if you type in wind or destruction, but not as much for stillness, so you think of symbolism. What does it mean to be wind still? Nothing is moving. But how can you show that? Through the image of candles, for example, because candles can only burn if there’s no wind. It is subtle, and you have to think quite a bit. It took some months until all three of us were happy, but then it went well.
Which pieces intrigued you most, or surprised by how they turned out in the end? What are your highlights?
Nico: For me, it’s the look with a band t-shirt and an incrustation silk skirt. It is so simple, yet it’s a band t-shirt with a basically couture piece underneath it, the highest and the lowest forms of fashion pressed into one look. I like the contrast.
Julia: For this season, we developed very special knitwear for the first time, using destruction methods that would emulate the look. The process took a lot of research to make it look authentic and disrupted, but it didn’t disintegrate completely. For the skirt, we have been looking for the right yarn for ages. The idea was to make it look as if the acid rain made the skirt wet so it disintegrates, so we needed a yarn that naturally looks wet. We ended up with the viscose yarn, and then we did a lot of samples for knitting to achieve this ripped look. We had a person helping us with it, and with her experience and the right yarn, it became a couture piece, even though I thought it’d be a mere knitted skirt that looked destroyed. It quite surprised me how every little factor mattered. The process was intense with all the effort we put into it, I found it quite rewarding after all.
Was there any piece you argued over?
[Both laugh]
Julia: The Vagabundle bag was my idea, Nico, and our leather artisan hated it. Then I explained the idea again and again, and they finally understood. I don’t know what I explained differently; to me, it was the same handbag, the same idea. It became quite popular, people requested it a lot, but funny enough, it almost didn’t happen. It was not the only piece we argued over, of course (laughs).
Nico: I think a good amount of discussions makes the end results better.
As for the future, is scaling the business something you are interested in?
Nico: I mean, there is scaling and scaling. What we design is quite a niche. Neither do I need to become the size of a house like Jacquemus, nor have stores at ski resorts. I would like to remain a niche business that serves a certain clientele. We would have one store somewhere for people who understand what we do. But it’s not for everyone, and it doesn’t need to be for everyone. I don’t want to design for everyone.
Julia: We heard from our clients that a pop-up and a physical venue are great, so I think these are a good idea for us, and then visiting the cities where we feel welcome. It is, of course, unrealistic for everyone to come here, so pop-ups could work instead of a stand-alone boutique. I think expansion should happen organically. I would love to work with the stores that appreciate what we do. For me, scaling is not fixated in one direction. It could also be that we just broaden what we have to offer. For example, we make costumes for contemporary dance. This is scaling for us, not only doing runway fashion but also expressing ourselves in other disciplines.
Out of Hands, a contemporary dance piece by Michiel Vandevelde featuring costumes designed by Milk of Lime premieres on the 23rd of April in Leuven at STUK and will show in Antwerp on the 3rd and 6th of May at De Studio.
Photos
Model @minaep_ with @swaymodels_
Photography @nikitalaganovskis
Styling @fayedamen
Edit @julballardt & @nico_verhaegen
MUA @annakleimenova.makeupartist using @ellisfaascosmetics
Lookbook images
@kajlehner @julialeegoodwin @stela_alusi
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