Milk of Lime

Julia: We’re good, how are you?

Nico: Where are you right now?

Julia: You’re quite close to us.

Nico: Yeah, it’s probably a four- or five-hour drive from Munich. We live in a small winemaker’s village. We’re in like a microclimate with a lot of grapes around.

Julia: I’ve loved METAL since I was a teenager, so this is really nice for me.

Julia: Yeah, because I mean, where we live now is where I actually grew up, but I at some point commuted to a bigger city to go to school. There was this magazine store in the train station, and there were always two or three magazines that I saved up for. METAL was one of them.

Nico: They’re probably very different for both of us because I come from graphic design, so I studied graphic design before I got into fashion. I knew the fashion designers within the fashion industry more than the fashion designers they were working with. I loved Peter De Potter and Tom Tosseyn, who were the graphic designers for Raf Simons back in the day. These are the guys that made me go into fashion.
Julia: Yeah. I’m a bit more, I don’t know, a classic fashion girl. I remember playing dress up as a child. My mum, she had a box with scarves, like winter scarves, and I would always dress my little sister; styling her and wrapping her. They weren’t garments, but I always made a look with these scarves. That’s really my earliest fashion memory. Being a girl, eight years old or so.

Nico: Tumblr definitely. For graphic design back in the day, it was such a hub for finding new stuff. It was a place where I first discovered really weird, cool things. But I was also very much into little prints, little zines — in Belgium, where I grew up, you can find these things everywhere.
Julia: I was more of a magazine girl, if I’m honest. Those stores where you could find a lot of magazines, like physical copies of them, where the places that pulled me in. Of course, I was also on the Internet. I had a little cute blog where I posted stuff. But I didn’t have Tumblr. I was more about these physical things.

Julia: I was at the opening talk for this artist the other day. She’s a painter and she said something that totally clicked for me, because it’s completely how I have experienced it as well. So, in the early days of the Internet, it was like a prairie. Everything was existing in a wild way, and kind of next to each other. You could really stumble upon something and be surprised. Now that the algorithm is there, you almost have no chance of finding something niche because you’re always being guided somewhere else. Everything is pre-filtered. This prairie thought really stuck with me because it’s really how it was. These days I’m also rather bored by the Internet. It does feel totally different. It doesn’t feel like this cool place where you can discover things. It’s more so a place where you’re bombarded with advertisement.

Nico: Yeah. It’s a weird way in which fashion is evolving. It feels like it has very little to do with what fashion should be about — at least according to my idea of fashion.

Nico: We both have very much a maker’s spirit. I knew of Julia, but we actually only met in our Master’s programme because I was a year below her. We met in a workshop.
Julia: I took a gap year and he didn’t, and then suddenly we were in the same year.
Nico: And then there was a workshop and we just, from the first moment, started making stuff together. It felt like there was this unspoken bond. Not much needed to be said, we were just doing things together.

Julia: No, it kind of just happened because of this dynamic that Nico described. We kind of couldn't not work together. It was always like, I was thinking about this thing. Or, Oh yeah, I have this book, should I make a photo? We were always somehow already in the project. And then we were in Paris during the pandemic. We did an internship at Givenchy — him in menswear and me in womenswear. It was totally by chance that we ended up in the same house. but then because of the circumstances of how different a big house can feel and how crazy a city can feel during a pandemic, there was this urge that came up to do something of our own.
So, it was never like this big dream for us to have a label together, but because of all these pressing circumstances, we were like, Oh, maybe this is a good moment? Should we not try something? And then there was this offer from my family. They were like, “Hey, look, I know it’s not a fashion city here, but you have rooms here. If you really want to start something, do it from here, because it’s going to be a good base for you.”
Nico: It was also a little bit of us thinking about the larger questions of life. Okay, we like fashion, but we don’t necessarily want to grow old in Paris or in a big city in a small space. Ideally, in 10 years, if you work at a house, your apartment might be 40 square metres instead of 20 square metres, but it’s like, I personally would much rather have a garden and, I don’t know, be able to plant stuff.
Julia: Because we’re also makers, we require space. If you want to make a pattern at home, you need more than a little table. You need space. If you’re driven by the making process and not only by the drawing process (which is fine too, it’s just not how we work), then you need storage and big tables and an outdoor space. Basically, we wanted to continue doing fashion at a high level but to still satisfy those other things in life.

Nico: I mean, we’re constantly inspired by what is happening around us. And for us, I don’t know, nature has always been a prime inspiration point. But not the pretty parts of nature. Maybe it’s a wall that has been decaying over years, or, like now [in Germany] how everything’s rotting outside.
Julia: Or wilting.
Nico: Yeah, or wilting. These beautiful colours just come up organically.
Julia: And you can, of course, Google these colours and look it up online. But first, you have to prompt the computer and be like, What does the colour palette of a wilting hydrangea look like? You can do that and you’ll find the same colours, but here, you can stumble upon things in real life. We really enjoy that. Here, it’s like, Oh, there’s this field and this person has left this weird blanket outside. And now look how it has changed over time. It can be very surprising sometimes.
Nico: Yeah, and it’s also refreshing to be surrounded by, I don’t know, farmers, winemakers, people who are not into fashion, because it’s quite grounding to be reminded that fashion is not everything. In a city, you’re just kind of in this bubble of thinking that it is the most important thing in life, and that is a little bit absurd.

Julia: Totally. All the time. It’s always like, “Can this be cheaper? Can you make a hundred of these?” Or, “Yes, I want to buy it, but only next season,” or, “Can you make this piece in like, 20 different colours?” There’s a lot of questions that arise and I don’t know if that’s because we’re in the countryside or if it’s just part of the business itself.
Nico: I think the business kind of wants designers to work in a certain way. And if you don’t fit into that way of working, then you’re going to have a little bit of a harder time. But I believe that if we are persistent in maintaining our way of working, then the people that really like it are going to be able to adapt over time.

Julia: Yeah, it actually circles back to your other question of how we’re influenced by our surroundings. The last collection was roughly themed around weather. And in the broader sense, we were thinking of weathering and what that can mean and what that can look like. We worked with natural dyes, which we explored in a workshop away from the city. It happened somewhere in the countryside in the Netherlands. We brought that knowledge back to Germany, and because we have a little garden patch outside, we were able to grow some flowers and extract dye from it. It only formed a small part of the collection, but we want to explore it further in the future. But yes, we were looking at how we can combine the look of something distressed (which we just happen to like, it’s just a personal taste) with very couture-y techniques that are high end and can age well.
Nico: Yeah, I mean, the collection was inspired by the weather because the weather impacts us in the countryside way more than it does in the city. In the city, you get wet. In the countryside, your harvest can be ruined. Julia’s family also makes wine, so the family has experienced this first hand. And yeah, the weather is weird. Especially now with climate change and so on. So there are these super heavy coats in the collection, but there are also lingerie inspired pieces in there — lots of transparency. We really wanted to work with this contrast. You’re wearing like a four kilo jacket or you’re wearing something that you almost can’t feel.

Nico: The brown one?

Julia: This is also a leather that is kind of a pull-up leather. So it’s stiff in the beginning, but if the wearer has it and wears it constantly, it will actually crease where the warmth of your arm makes a crease, and the leather will also change a little bit in colour. But it’s meant to age in a beautiful way.
Nico: Yeah, it will age with you and it will become your jacket over time. It will take the shape of your body.

Julia: That’s our aim because this is how we consume garments. You find a leather jacket, maybe it’s already used or it was handed down to you, and it already has patina and it gets even more patina when you start to wear it. You can choose to let it distress or fall apart, or you can choose to grease it every week or once a year. Like, you have a part to say in how it ages. And we just happen to like this kind of ageing quality in garments.
What you said about seasonality and designing for seasons, I want to add that I agree that the fashion system exists within seasons. It makes sense if somebody explains it to you. It sounds logical to make little dresses for summer and coats for winter. But then Nico said to me, “But how do we wear clothes?” I don’t have like a winter closet and a summer closet. I wear my summer clothes in the winter, but as an under-layer. So, we thought, Okay, if we really want to be an authentic voice in fashion, we have to design according to our values as consumers. We have to think about how we wear and see fashion and then put that into our way of working. I’m glad that this comes across.
Nico: It’s also why we only do one collection a year for now. We switch it with cultural projects. We just got back from Belgium where we were doing a dance project. We’re working with the same choreographer for the second time now, but this is what we’re doing in the winter before we begin preparing for another summer collection.

Nico: I think functionality is the wrong word. I think it’s more about materiality and what the material wants to become. A silk dress is not functional. A silk dress serves a purpose of just beauty. Like, it’s never going to be waterproof. It’s never going to be easy to bike in.
Julia: But it might have an emotional functionality. I mean, it makes you feel beautiful, and that’s a kind of function.

Julia: Yeah, I mean we want to make garments that not only look good, but ones that you can move your arms in. Or maybe the material serves a certain purpose as well. But yeah, it’s not like the main thing we think about. We’re never like, Oh, we have to make a trouser that serves this function. I think we’re very focussed on beauty as well. We keep functionality in mind, but beauty is our highest aim.
Nico: Also, if you talk about sustainability and functionality and so on, the most sustainable thing is something that you’ll love for a long time.
Julia: And that can only really be achieved through beauty. Like, if you have this one jacket that you really love, it almost doesn’t matter what function it serves. You probably love it because the fit is flattering, because it suits you, and because it holds beauty. I think this is an underrated factor when we have discussions about sustainability, for better or for worse.

Julia: Going to a fun concert.
Nico: Yeah, I always imagine that they’re just all hanging out at a concert together. But they could have different backgrounds. Like, I don’t know, maybe someone is a banker, but then has this background of going to punk concerts. Or maybe they’re a farmer or a winemaker and are playing in a hardcore band.

Nico: Yeah, because that’s who we are. We go to punk concerts and bake bread.
Julia: But I also want to add that I think that the people who wear our garments, like this fictional character, has a tendency for poetry, or has a sense of poetry in their life. It’s how they look at the world. I always bring up the wilted flowers because many people would say, “Oh yeah, this is rotten, this is done, throw it away.” But the poetic person will see colours in it. I think of this kind of person as well when I think about our customers. And it can express itself in a harsher way as well, like at a punk concert. It can also be somebody who’s a writer. It’s a person who understands that it’s not just blue ink that runs down a page, but that maybe the ink was from a bark that was harvested in a garden. A person who feels these nuances.

Nico: I mean, for me personally, music plays a very big role. It always has, coming from the punk and hardcore scene back in the day. I designed band merch for lots of bands, and this still has quite a direct impact on what we design. There’s a bunch of band shirts in the collection right now, and it’s all from the old things we find.
Julia: What’s cool about being in the countryside is that you have these, I don’t know what these shops are called, but they’re these corners with books where you can just take the books for free and bring another one to replace it. You also have these shops where you can find really weird things — like gems that you just can’t look up on the Internet. Actually, the last collection was themed around this book we found for two euros somewhere at a flea market. It had these predictions of farmers from the olden days. It was like, “If it rains in May, then the harvest will be like this,” and it contained little illustrations, like woodcuts. When we got home, we noticed that the book only had the three spring months, so we went online and found the remaining books to complete the year. And then this was our starting point.

Julia: Yeah, it starts like this often. With books and actual printed goods. Lots of scanning, lots of printing, scanning again, and playing around.

Nico: Yeah, I mean, when we found that book and we read the title, it was Wie das Wetter wird, or How the weather is going to be, it was like, wow this sounds like a really good starting point for a collection.
Julia: And you know, in school, we learned how to have ideas if you don’t have ideas, and how to launch a concept and how to go about it. But sometimes you get inspired by something so surprising. You might be like, this weather thing has nothing to do with fashion. Let’s go look at something else. But then you keep coming back to this one thing. But this is the thing, you have to listen to your intuition as well, because if it sparks something in you in that moment, it might have the biggest potential to resonate with other people. This is something that is totally trust based.

Julia: Sometimes we do.
Nico: We’re inspired by the same things and we gravitate towards the same things, but sometimes in the details, or in how it gets translated, we have arguments.
Julia: If you look at our masters collections, the graduate collections, they are super different in expression, but this is why we connected when we met. We looked at each other’s books and stuff, and we were like, I have the same picture in my mood board, how did we arrive at such different places? But it’s interesting that it’s the same inspiration source, because it means that we have the same starting point.

Julia: Yeah, that’s something that everyone knows now. It was something that I started with my roommate in Antwerp. It was just kind of like, feeling a little bit frustrated sometimes. I’m very happy how Milk of Lime is kind of the total opposite of @antwerpmemedepartment because I’m very tired of irony within fashion now. It’s kind of exhausting. With Milk of Lime, we want to try to make something very honest and poetic.

Nico: I think irony is a little bit easier than doing something genuine. It’s less vulnerable. With social media, you’re putting out a very dishonest version of yourself. You’re never going to show me your entire self. It’s very surface level. It’s very easy.
Julia: Yeah, I was a little bit frustrated at fashion parties because they were always playing the same music. Not that I have anything against that music, but because it was always just the same. I felt like, Oh, but aren’t you creative people into something else as well? Like, can’t we just switch it up from time to time? But no, it’s always Toxic by Britney. It’s a fun song, but it just makes you wonder, like, are you listening to that when you’re alone? Do you love that song so much that you play it all the time? Or is it just a protection thing? Like, you don’t have to worry about people thinking that it’s shit because you can always say that you were listening to something, or doing something ironically. Show what you love, then people can say that it’s shit. But you can always hide behind irony and say that you were listening to a song ironically.

Nico: If you’re not the most outspoken or loud person, communicating in a quitter way online is quite hard. But for example, at our first showroom in Paris, we were meeting with people who are interested in our clothes, and we really felt a kind of community there. I feel like the Milk of Lime community is going to grow offline more than it’s going to grow online.

Nico: I would love to do a Dover Street Market installation. That would be really dope. Just putting it out there.
Julia: Yeah, and that goes along with what I feel. I feel like physical space is going to be so essential for the fashion system, for new clients or consumers or people who just buy fashion. It’s okay to have the Internet. It’s a great extension to reach people in small villages and stuff, but I really pray for this physical mass. I feel like when people have the chance to experience it [first-hand], there’s so much more emotion and that’s very beautiful. So I would love to have a physical space where we display our work. It can be a community thing like Dover Street Market, but it’s really about diving into the world in a physical way.