shoeless
Member
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2012
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 1
Hi guys,
New here, stumbled upon the forum while doing some research. I found a lot of back posts from 2009/2010 hilarious (but not as educational as I would have liked) so thought I'd ask a specific question, and it would be great to see if a few of you guys were still around to offer up advice to a Lux Shoe newbie..
Bought myself a pair of Corthay shoes (Arca - Purple), and want to take care of them right. I have Valentino, Ferragamo, Prada and Gucci etc (fashion brands), good shoes, look good, decent leather, but I've never really had to do much to them.. Wipe them with a damp cloth and they're usually fine (I don't wear dress shoes to often, a lot of the time they sit in my shoe closet). Though the leather on the Corthay shoes seem more natural and less worked over then with my other shoes (that and some of my shoes are patent leather, which doesn't ever seem to look bad).
I have a few questions. First, with the "fashion" shoes, I find that since I live in a humid country, they get white mold on them from time to time, and I have to take them out of the closet clean them with a damp cloth and put them back in when they're dry (which isn't long, as the cloth isn't really that damp). It happens to some (but not all) of my belts as well.
Is there anything I should be doing to prevent the mold on these shoes, other the obvious mold prevention methods? As in, do my shoes/belts just need a special polish or spray that'll do the trick?
Back to Corthay... I was told by an unconfident sales person that I should clean my shoes with a horse hair brush (must I buy an expensive brush or will those kiwi brushes do, I don't mind buying the brush, but I have a few new kiwi brushes laying around the house that I don't even remember buying). Then I'm to use Pommadier in an appropriate color (in my case red and blue mixed), again apply it with a brush and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then I'm suppose to use another horsehair brush to clean off the excess dry cream. Once cleaned off, I'm suppose to then apply the Luxe Wax with a damp cloth (black wax, although my shoes are purple so I don't get why he said black wax was fine). Once the wax is evenly applied I take a dry cloth and buff my shoes till they shine.
So does this sound about right? Am I missing something? And is the black luxe wax accurate, or should I be using navy blue luxe wax or neutral luxe wax? (saphir makes those colors, but not red luxe wax, so I couldn't mix to purple)..
Next, what is a good product for cleaning off the dirt from the shoes? As I assume that with waxes and creams, you'll get a lot of dirt buildup and eventually you'll need to clean the entire shoe with something like soap and water (read that on this forum). How often do you need to do a dirt cleaning like that?
Last and most important, I was wondering how to get the soles of your shoes black again. I seen on youtube a shoe shine fellow used black shoe dye (dylon brand) and he just painted the shoes up then added wax. But honestly that seems like a bad idea, since dylon brand shoe dye seems to really dry up the leather. So I was wondering, what would you do to get the sides of the soles black again? Also, the bottoms of shoes, can you do something to make them look nice again? Or should one just not bother with such things out of fear of destroying the leather?
Sorry if this is such a long post, but I did a lot of searching and most of the answers I found seemed unreliable, or didn't pertain exactly to my case.. And a lot of the shoe advice out there are for big work boots that obviously use a tougher more resistant and most of the time heavily oil tanned leather. I don't think leather is apples and apples so getting advice on the net is hard., I want advice to be specific to the type of leather Corthay and other lux brands use, just to clear up some inaccuracies.
Best,
Caleb
New here, stumbled upon the forum while doing some research. I found a lot of back posts from 2009/2010 hilarious (but not as educational as I would have liked) so thought I'd ask a specific question, and it would be great to see if a few of you guys were still around to offer up advice to a Lux Shoe newbie..
Bought myself a pair of Corthay shoes (Arca - Purple), and want to take care of them right. I have Valentino, Ferragamo, Prada and Gucci etc (fashion brands), good shoes, look good, decent leather, but I've never really had to do much to them.. Wipe them with a damp cloth and they're usually fine (I don't wear dress shoes to often, a lot of the time they sit in my shoe closet). Though the leather on the Corthay shoes seem more natural and less worked over then with my other shoes (that and some of my shoes are patent leather, which doesn't ever seem to look bad).
I have a few questions. First, with the "fashion" shoes, I find that since I live in a humid country, they get white mold on them from time to time, and I have to take them out of the closet clean them with a damp cloth and put them back in when they're dry (which isn't long, as the cloth isn't really that damp). It happens to some (but not all) of my belts as well.
Is there anything I should be doing to prevent the mold on these shoes, other the obvious mold prevention methods? As in, do my shoes/belts just need a special polish or spray that'll do the trick?
Back to Corthay... I was told by an unconfident sales person that I should clean my shoes with a horse hair brush (must I buy an expensive brush or will those kiwi brushes do, I don't mind buying the brush, but I have a few new kiwi brushes laying around the house that I don't even remember buying). Then I'm to use Pommadier in an appropriate color (in my case red and blue mixed), again apply it with a brush and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then I'm suppose to use another horsehair brush to clean off the excess dry cream. Once cleaned off, I'm suppose to then apply the Luxe Wax with a damp cloth (black wax, although my shoes are purple so I don't get why he said black wax was fine). Once the wax is evenly applied I take a dry cloth and buff my shoes till they shine.
So does this sound about right? Am I missing something? And is the black luxe wax accurate, or should I be using navy blue luxe wax or neutral luxe wax? (saphir makes those colors, but not red luxe wax, so I couldn't mix to purple)..
Next, what is a good product for cleaning off the dirt from the shoes? As I assume that with waxes and creams, you'll get a lot of dirt buildup and eventually you'll need to clean the entire shoe with something like soap and water (read that on this forum). How often do you need to do a dirt cleaning like that?
Last and most important, I was wondering how to get the soles of your shoes black again. I seen on youtube a shoe shine fellow used black shoe dye (dylon brand) and he just painted the shoes up then added wax. But honestly that seems like a bad idea, since dylon brand shoe dye seems to really dry up the leather. So I was wondering, what would you do to get the sides of the soles black again? Also, the bottoms of shoes, can you do something to make them look nice again? Or should one just not bother with such things out of fear of destroying the leather?
Sorry if this is such a long post, but I did a lot of searching and most of the answers I found seemed unreliable, or didn't pertain exactly to my case.. And a lot of the shoe advice out there are for big work boots that obviously use a tougher more resistant and most of the time heavily oil tanned leather. I don't think leather is apples and apples so getting advice on the net is hard., I want advice to be specific to the type of leather Corthay and other lux brands use, just to clear up some inaccuracies.
Best,
Caleb
