Q & A: Episode 3

Transcription

Hi, I'm Kirby Allison and we love helping the well-dressed take care of their wardrobes. In our third installment of our Q&A; series I'm going to be selecting a few comments that have been made on our YouTube channel over the last week and answering them in person. We appreciate all of our subscribers and especially your comments and I enjoy getting back to most all of those comments personally. As a token of our appreciation for your involvement we're going to be giving a free pair of our Sovereign Grade shoelaces to each of the individuals whom we've selected for this Q&A series.

Our first comment is from Michael on the first polish for my Dimitri Gomez bespoke shoes. His question is "Hi Kirby, I got a new pair of shoes recently but instead of having used the Renovateur, I forgot, I just used a cream polish buffed it off then the Pat De Luxe and buffed it off. Is it too late to apply the Renovateur now or should I just wait until my next polish?" Thanks Michael, so, Michaels' question is really about how to polish a new pair of shoes and we actually have a video on our YouTube channel speaking specifically about the routine that one would find with a new pair of shoes. Whenever you receive a new pair of shoes it's nice to condition the leather thoroughly because you don't know how long those shoes have sat in the leather. Normally is pretty dehydrated because you don't see any type of conditioning or finishing for many factories. So, that's why we recommend conditioning with the Saphir Renovateur followed by the cream and wax polishes. Now if you skipped using the Saphir Renovateur during that process it's no big deal because the Saphir Pommadier cream polish is also a fantastic conditioner. So, Michael I just simply recommend holding off on the Renovateur until the next time you polish your shoes. Thank you for your question and we look forward to sending you a pair of our Sovereign Grade shoe laces.

Our next question is from Evan Moore on my shoe collection video his comment reads "This is a great video. 15 years to accumulate such a beautiful collection of shoes. Do you have a stopping point in mind? Also, how many do you have total?" Evan, a great question, you know I think I've actually made a point not to count how many pairs of shoes I have because that would be embarrassing, and I want plausible deniability whenever my wife asks me. The beauty of bespoke is that the price point really forces one especially someone like me on a budget to really slowly and deliberately acquire shoes over years, if not decades. At this point I'm really just adding two to three pairs of shoes max per year and that's really a good pace to really kind of add and build out my wardrobe of shoes. But it's important to understand that you know my collection started in college with shoes that I was buying on sale and through friends and so you know even someone that fifteen years later you know has a pretty significant shoe collection. It didn't start that way it's important to just recognize that it's been a very slow evolution and it took me a long time before I ever bought my first pair of shoes that cost more than four hundred dollars and that was a big deal to me whenever I was able to afford that and those were my Alfred Sargent shoes and then after that I still remember buying my first pair of Gaziano & Girling's, you know they cost over a thousand dollars and I thought it was just absolutely insane to be spending that much money on a pair of shoes but I received them and absolutely loved wearing them and received so many compliments and found that once I had upgraded to that quality level that I really wasn't wearing any of my other shoes. And so that's kind of how one really develops and upgrades their shoe collection over time. You know, you acquired a certain quality level that your budget allows then you know if you're lucky you're able to go up a rung in that ladder and you begin acquiring it that at that quality level. Yeah so, the video on my shoe collection really isn't meant to discourage anyone but to really show that a shoe collection is an evolutionary journey and that's really part of the fun of developing one if you're someone that's really into shoes. Thanks Evan for your question and I look forward to sending you a pair of our Sovereign Grade shoelaces to use on one of your pair of shoes and Evan we'd love to see some of your shoes you know if you post them on Instagram and use the hashtag #ShoeShineSunday we enjoy seeing those and actually repost a lot of photographs of our customer shoes on our Instagram channel so if you're polishing a pair of shoes take a quick snap post it on Instagram and tag @HangerProject and #ShoeShineSunday.

Question number three is from a user called Jellyfish703 and it's on our How to Condition Leather Shoes video where we talked about the three primary conditioners that Saphir Medaille D'Or sells for leather shoes the Saphir Renovateur, the Saphir Mink Oil and the Saphir Nappa Leather Bone. His question is "if you're to buy only one, which one do you choose?" well the simple question is, of course, the Saphir Renovateur. The Saphir Renovateur is what we call here at the Hanger Project "liquid gold" and the reason is because it is such an incredible all-purpose conditioner. It does a great job nourishing and conditioning the leather, but it also contains some waxes, so it produces a nice soft shine and if you were really to just have one product only, the Saphir Renovateur would be what we would recommend -- as a neutral, it's incredibly versatile you can use it on any color shoes, but you can also use it on multiple materials. It's safe to use on a calfskin, cordovan, alligator, crocodile, and ostrich. I mean there's hardly a smooth leather that the Saphir Renovateur can't be used on. Now, the only limitation the Saphir Renovateur is that it doesn't have any type of pigment. So, at a certain point you do need to use a cream polish, such as the Saphir Pommadier cream polish to introduce pigment because inevitably, if you're wearing a pair of shoes they're gonna become nicked or scuffed or have a little bit of discoloration. And so, the pigments help just renew the patina, the finish of a pair of shoes. Now the mink oil is 100% mink oil that's a new product that Saphir came out with and it's a great really potent conditioner but it's something that's really meant for more occasional use and then the Saphir Nappa, again great product, it is just a conditioning agent doesn't contain any waxes and is certainly the the safest and most almost inert polish to use if you're ever worried about any type of discoloration or if you're worried about changing the texture of the leather then the Saphir Nappa bomb is great to use but it's certainly more specialized than say an all-purpose good product like the Saphir Renovateur. Thanks Jellyfish we appreciate your comments and look forward to sending you a pair of our Sovereign Grade shoelaces to use on a pair of your shoes.

Our next question is from Alexandre Ung and his question is on our George Cleverley First Polish video it reads "I'm a bit confused about which brushes to have to clean and buff shoes. In my case, I own two brushes one black and one neutral I used the black one to clean and buff my black shoes and the neutral one to clean and buff my colour 8 cordovan shoes. If I ever buy a whiskey or a light brown pair of shoes what I need to buy another brush or can I use the same brush that I use for my colour 8? Should I keep cleaning my shoes with the same brushes that I use to buff the creams and polishes?" Alexandre this is a really common question that we get and we actually have a video on our YouTube channel where we speak specifically about this. So, the whole entire idea with having two shoeshine brushes one with dark bristles and one with lighter color bristles is to help you differentiate which brush you use to buff off your dark polishes like a black or a really dark brown and which you use to buff off your lighter polishes like your a cordovan or a light brown shoe and the reason is because every brush you use is going to develop residual traces of the polish and you want to prevent any type of streaking that might occur if you were to take a brush that you're using for your dark colored shoes and then buff off something that's lighter in color. So, that's really the purpose of having two -- the black and the light bristles are really to just help you visually understand which is used for what colors. You know as far as cleaning your shoes the same brush you use to buff off polish can be used clean your shoes at the end of the day or before you start polishing. Any type of muddy or salty shoe or a shoe that's really heavily soiled you would always want to clean that off first using a damp cloth or one of our cleaning daubers with a little bit of leather cleaning soap first before you really use any of your shoes brushes the buff that's you. And also remember you can always gently clean your shoeshine brush by just buffing it against a clean towel but you really wouldn't ever want to clean it with any type of soap or water. Now Alexandre thank you for your question and we look forward to sending you one of our Sovereign Grade shoelaces for you to use on one of your pairs of shoes.

Our last question is from a NoChaser Guitar Channel on our Allen Edmonds $50 challenge his comment reads, "I have a pair of walnut McCallister's I bought on eBay last December. After many cleaners, creams, and wax polishes I now use Saphir products. I first cleaned up all the junk off the shoes with the Reno'Mat and after every week of wearing, I clean the shoes using saddle soap and a little Renovateur. I like my McCallister's to stay as light as possible so I don't use any pigmented cream or polish. I'm however considering using neutral Pommadier cream or Pate De Luxe. Any feedback on the current method/ plan? Thanks" So, great question and you're absolutely right if you're really looking to keep the color of your shoes as light as possible you're probably going to want to avoid using a pigmented cream polish as much as possible and that's where the Saphir Renovateur really comes in as just being a fantastic all-purpose conditioning product. You can use it to not only condition the leather but because it contains those soft waxes you can also use it to build up a nice soft shine. Now using a neutral Pommadier cream polish would be a little bit redundant to using the Saphir Renovateur but you could use a neutral wax polish if you wanted to really elevate the shine by introducing those hard waxes into the finish. You know, another thing to keep in mind is that all the pigments and any pigmented cream polish is going to be transparent so it's not going to radically alter or change the finish of a shoe. And at some point you're gonna scuff or nick or discolor a pair of shoes and you are going to need to introduce pigment. Now if you're really worried about darkening the shoe you can always choose a pigment color that's just slightly lighter than the color of the shoe and that'll help prevent any type of darkening that would otherwise occur. Even if you were to apply black polish and a pair of brown shoes you could really pull that off very effectively using the Saphir Reno'Mat. So, here at the Hanger Project you know we recommend experimenting and having a little bit of fun just playing around with the colors to help antique or varnish and really evolve the patina of a pair of shoes. Thank you for your comments we really appreciate all of your comments and questions on our Channel and I'd love to send you a pair of our Sovereign Grade shoelaces just as a small token appreciation for your involvement on our channel.

Thank you again for all of your comments and questions. We generally appreciate hearing from all of our viewers and I really love reading all your comments and questions personally and try to get back to as many of those as possible. So, remember our YouTube channel isn't just a place for us to share our videos with you but it's also a platform for us to really interact, answer your questions, and help share with you some of the things that we've learned here at the Hanger Project. If you liked this video give us the thumbs up or better yet subscribe to our Channel and turn on notifications by clicking the bell directly to the right of the subscribe button so that you can receive notifications whenever we post new videos here on our YouTube channel. And of course please remember to visit HangerProject.com where we have the largest selection of luxury garment care and luxury shoe care accessories in the world as well as other products for the well-dressed and while you're there take a moment sign up for our newsletter so that you can learn whenever we release new products, run promotions, as well as, our weekly digest of videos that we publish here on our YouTube channel. I'm Kirby Allison and we love helping the well-dressed take care of their wardrobes. Thanks for joining us.