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Black streaks and spots on brown shoes?

detroiter

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I have black spots and streaks on my allen edmonds brown shoes after polishing, and they wont go away. I used the allen edmonds shoe polish, but there are a few streaks and spots of black, that looks like caked in shoe polish maybe? how can i get rid of this black?
 

MyOtherLife

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Post photos.
 

cptjeff

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It's called "patina", and it's part of the attraction of brown shoes.
 

detroiter

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Originally Posted by cptjeff
It's called "patina", and it's part of the attraction of brown shoes.

Really?

I will post pics tomorrow sometime.
 

cptjeff

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Originally Posted by detroiter
Really?

I will post pics tomorrow sometime.


If it's what I'm thinking it is, yes. With browns, as you polish over time the scuffs and creases take color a little differently, and that textures the color of the shoe over time. Black shoes don't do that becuase there's no room for variation between dark and light, it's just a flat black.

If you stick around long, you'll find that patina is much desired on this forum, and antiquing, which is patina created artificially, and people pay extra for it.

You might browse this thread or do a few searches for patina and antiquing yourself: http://www.styleforum.net/showthread.php?t=61011
 

Wideknot

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PG is at least half right, unless you're regularly missing the great porcelain target. The black streaks are most likely scuffs from your other shoe. These can be removed, but I've found that it takes some aggressive action that sometimes causes more problems than it resolves. If you want to get rid of them, you could try some finger nail polish remover. It will strip the wax coating and the streak along with it. Once this is done, nourish the leather with a good leather treatment (Lexol is one, Saphir Renovateur is most often SF recommended, I use Kiwi) then repolish as normal. Frankly, unless they're really bad, I just keep polishing over these scuff marks and, as cptjeff remarked, in time they become part of the shoe's patina.
 

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