Shoe Experiment

I bought a pair of Edward Green for Paul Stuart black captoes at a thrift store this week. They were covered in cracks, one of which went all the way through the leather.

After some conditioning and polishing (with blue polish, as you can kind of see in the picture) they looked like this:




They didn't look good, so I decided to change the color entirely. I used rubbing alcohol and some solvent I found in my house to remove polish etc, then household bleach to remove the dye. After that I applied leather conditioner and then almost a full can of Meltonian olive green shoe cream. Now they look like this:






I think the beaten up look of the shoe goes well with the color, and I now plan to wear them.

I would like to deepen the green color a little bit though. I only used the Meltonian cream because that was all they had at my local shoe repair shop in the color I wanted. What should I look for? I'm sure polish will stain better than cream, but I'm having trouble finding it in this color.

Also, I'm fine with the crack aesthetically, but I'm concerned that it will get bigger when I wear the shoes.

could you put a patch inside the shoe behind the hole so that it doesn't rip further?

PS - I prefer the idea of #2 coloring. i think the antique look works better with browns and reds but also with blues and greens like this. If they had been brown originally, I'd have thrown some oxblood in there. With black, I think something like green works better, becuase with blue it could look like you accidently used the wrong polish.

Originally Posted by rubin749

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I bought a pair of Edward Green for Paul Stuart black captoes at a thrift store this week. They were covered in cracks, one of which went all the way through the leather. After some conditioning and polishing (with blue polish, as you can kind of see in the picture) they looked like this: They didn't look good, so I decided to change the color entirely. I used rubbing alcohol and some solvent I found in my house to remove polish etc, then household bleach to remove the dye. After that I applied leather conditioner and then almost a full can of Meltonian olive green shoe cream. Now they look like this: I think the beaten up look of the shoe goes well with the color, and I now plan to wear them. I would like to deepen the green color a little bit though. I only used the Meltonian cream because that was all they had at my local shoe repair shop in the color I wanted. What should I look for? I'm sure polish will stain better than cream, but I'm having trouble finding it in this color. Also, I'm fine with the crack aesthetically, but I'm concerned that it will get bigger when I wear the shoes.
Look for Saphir recolour products. MIND YOU, you need to polish and condition these quite a lot more. they are still MUCH to dry...