Complete Shoe Shine Routine

Transcription

Hi I'm Kirby Allison founder of The Hanger Project. The purpose of this video is to show you the Presidential Shoeshine. This is our most thorough and extensive shoeshine here at The Hanger Project and we recommended it for once or twice a year total rejuvenation of a pair of shoes.

The first step to the presidential shoeshine is to use the Saphir Reno'Mat to basically strip off anything that's been placed on top of the leather. Now this is a great component of this president shoeshine because this is something you're only going to do once or twice a year. It is not something that we would recommend really using any more often than that because it is a pretty strong cleaner. And as with anything we always recommend that you first test this on a hidden area of the shoe just to make sure that it doesn't react in any unintended ways. Now the Saphir Reno'Mat you know was designed to be used on the highest quality leathers. So you really shouldn't experience any problem with high quality expensive shoes. You know really where we see problems are on lower quality shoes that might have used different type of dying techniques. Sometimes the Reno'Mat can can remove that. But after you've tested and I have it's fine. You know basically what you're going to use is you know the cotton chamois to basically just pull the wax finish off of the shoe so you're going to use moderate to firm pressure in small circular motions and you're going to see you know that the Reno'Mat's actually pulling the wax even some of the pigment from prior polishes off of the leather. So the Reno'Mat really does require a little bit of elbow grease here especially in the areas of the shoe where you have a lot of buildup of hard waxes particularly the toe-box. So I've been going at the toe-box you know probably for three or five minutes. So I'm pretty satisfied with you know having pulled off all the waxes off of the shoe. I've got it to where I wanted to be. So the last step that I like to do is that you know just a little bit of water on the shoe and then rub it with a clean chamois. Now the purpose of this is as you can see is removing any of the residual buildup of the Reno'Mat that's left in the leather. So you can see now whenever I sprayed the shoe with water and I use this clean chamois I'm not getting any you know white suds and so basically that's telling me that I pulled all of that off the shoe. So now that we've used the Reno'Mat to pull any of the accumulated resins or polish off of these Cleverley's I'm just going to allow them to dry probably you know 30 minutes an hour.

The first step to the presidential shoeshine is to use the Saphir Reno'Mat to basically strip off anything that's been placed on top of the leather. Now this is a great component of this president shoeshine because this is something you're only going to do once or twice a year. It is not something that we would recommend really using any more often than that because it is a pretty strong cleaner. And as with anything we always recommend that you first test this on a hidden area of the shoe just to make sure that it doesn't react in any unintended ways. Now the Saphir Reno'Mat you know was designed to be used on the highest quality leathers. So you really shouldn't experience any problem with high quality expensive shoes. You know really where we see problems are on lower quality shoes that might have used different type of dying techniques. Sometimes the Reno'Mat can can remove that. But after you've tested and I have it's fine. You know basically what you're going to use is you know the cotton chamois to basically just pull the wax finish off of the shoe so you're going to use moderate to firm pressure in small circular motions and you're going to see you know that the Reno'Mat's actually pulling the wax even some of the pigment from prior polishes off of the leather. So the Reno'Mat really does require a little bit of elbow grease here especially in the areas of the shoe where you have a lot of buildup of hard waxes particularly the toe-box. So I've been going at the toe-box you know probably for three or five minutes. So I'm pretty satisfied with you know having pulled off all the waxes off of the shoe. I've got it to where I wanted to be. So the last step that I like to do is that you know just a little bit of water on the shoe and then rub it with a clean chamois. Now the purpose of this is as you can see is removing any of the residual buildup of the Reno'Mat that's left in the leather. So you can see now whenever I sprayed the shoe with water and I use this clean chamois I'm not getting any you know white suds and so basically that's telling me that I pulled all of that off the shoe. So now that we've used the Reno'Mat to pull any of the accumulated resins or polish off of these Cleverley's I'm just going to allow them to dry probably you know 30 minutes an hour.

What we're going to do is we're going to provide deep conditioning and nourishment using the Saphir Dubbin. Now the Saphir Dubbin is a mink oil based you know dubbin graisse. It contains a high concentration of fish and animal fats and what this is going to do is it's going to really penetrate the leather to provide that nourishment to keep the leather soft and supple which prevents cracking and then just keeps it hydrated. So just apply with a cotton chamois. You know less is more and just apply it using you know small circular motions using moderate to firm pressure. I'm going to take it across the vamp and around the sides. Now the purpose of the dubbin again remember is the conditioning. So we recommend is that actually after you've applied the dubbin you allow you know at least a day for the leather to absorb those really deep nutrients. You can see almost immediately the leather you know really being fed by this dubbin. I'm going to take this all the way around the back of the shoe because of this leather you know really needs some of this deep hydration and there you go. So I'm not going to buff this off like I would a traditional cream or wax polish. I'm going to allow the leather to absorb this. You know the longer the better. Up to a day or two. So we've allowed the dubbin to dry overnight basically giving the dubbin or the leather as much time as possible to absorb the nutrients of the dubbin and so before we move on to applying the Renovateur we're just going to back off any excess dubbin using a horse hair shoeshine brush. So here's the shoe that we applied the dubbin on and using you know using light to moderate pressure we're just going to buff any excess dubbin off of the shoe.

OK. So the next step in the presidential shoeshine is to begin building the foundation of our finish using the Saphir Renovateur. The Saphir Renovateur Medaille d'Or is arguably Saphir's most popular product. It's like liquid gold. It's a water based mink oil cleaner and conditioner. So I'm going to put a little bit of a Renovateur on the chamois and I'm going to massage it into the leather using moderate to firm pressure. Now just like with any creams the longer you leave the creams on the leather the more nutrients the leather is going to be able to absorb. This is especially true with the Renovateur since it doesn't contain any solvents or turpentine. It's water based. So it just requires a little bit more time to absorb you know as many nutrients into the leather as possible. OK so after you apply the Renovateur allow it you know a good two to three you know five minutes to dry. Essentially the longer you can leave the Renovateur on the leather the more nutrients the leathers can absorb. But because it's not as potent it's more of an all purpose conditioner than say like the dubbin you know you don't need to leave it overnight. You know you can if you want to it's not going to hurt the leather for sure. But after you've allowed it to dry you're going to buff the Renovateur off of the shoe using a horse hairbrush. This just removes any excess Renovateur and then also it's going to bring you know kind of a massage over the waxes you know to buff them to a nice shine. After we've begun to build up the foundation of this fetish using the Saphir Renovateur.

The next step is to introduce a pigmented cream polish and there's absolutely no better pigmented cream polish on the market especially for high end luxury shoes like these bespoke Cleverleys than the Saphir Pommadier Medaille d'Or Cream Polish. So I like to take some out of the jar and then rub it on the top of the lid or the bottom of the lid to help me further control the amount of polish that I'm rubbing on the leather. So to begin you know simply put some of the cream polish on your chamois and then you're just going to rub and massage it into the leather. Add more as needed. Again you want to be massaging this into the leather. You're applying a thin layer but you don't want so much that it's clumping or gunking. It's not a problem if it occurs because you can buff it off but it just makes it buffing easier if you apply a thinner coat. One of the questions we always get is like you know how important is the perfect match? And you know there's really no such thing as a perfect match. One of the things to keep in mind is that you know this isn't a paint. It's not an alcohol based leather dye. I mean you know I could apply black polish to these burgundy shoes and it would darken the finish but it wouldn't make them black. So you're not going to ruin anything by using color that's you know slightly different than the natural color of the leather. And the other thing to keep in mind is you know part of the beauty of shining your own shoes is that you know the more you shine them you know the color and the patina of the shoe itself evolves. One of the other things that's really important about the Pommadier cream polish and this step is that you know we're introducing pigment and so the pigment is going to recolor any types of scuffs or scratches that may occur. I've allowed the Saphir Pommadier cream polish to absorb into the leather for about five minutes.

So next I simply take a horsehair shoeshine brush and we're going to buff off any of the extra cream polish and work that wax to a nice soft shine.

OK so now that we've applied you know two coats of the Saphir cream polish we've really renewed the finish. We're beginning to build that protective wax finish with the waxes. The next step is to take the Saphir Medaille d'Or Pate de Luxe Wax polish. Now the Saphir Medaille d'Or Pate de Luxe polish. The higher concentration of hard waxes. The carnauba wax. The montagna wax. And what that's going to do is it's going to build up that hard protective wax finish. So I'm just going to apply some of the wax onto my cotton chamois and then begin massaging this into the leather using small circular motions. So using small circular motions to apply the wax polish again you know you just want an even coat around the entire shoe after you've achieved an even coat allow it to dry and then you're going to buff it off with the horsehair brush. So we've allowed the Pate de Luxe wax polish to dry you know for a few minutes. You really just want the waxes to dry and then it's OK to buff them off. So I'm going to take a horsehair shoeshine brush using moderate to firm pressure and kind of brisk brushing. I'm going to buff those waxes off.

OK so you can really see that these Cleverleys are looking fantastic. So now that we've spent time making these uppers look fantastic. We don't want to forget about the rest of the shoe. Most importantly you never want to ignore the edge.

So what we're going to use here is the renovating repair cream which we use as an edged dressing. I really liked the renovating repair cream over a standard liquid dye based edge dressing because I find that you do a better job or that you're able to do a better job controlling the application and because this is essentially just resin and pigment you know it does a good job of filling any type of scuffs or indentations to smooth the surface off. So you can simply apply this using your finger. So I'm just applying a little bit of this dark brown edge dressing on my finger. And then you're just going to smooth it across the edge. So again, you get a little bit on there and then just take your finger and smooth it across. So I'm going to allow this a few minutes to dry.

The edge has been recolored. Ok. So the last step of the presidential shoeshine is to use the Saphir Medaille d'Or sole guard to condition and waterproof the soles of his shoe. The most overlooked part of a high quality dress shoe is most often the sole. And so this is the sole guard is a highly refined vegetable oil that is going to condition the sole and that has been modified in the laboratory also to provide waterproofing and so what that does is it just helps prevent you know the sole becoming you know really waterlogged. It helps prevent salt damage. And it's just going to prevent premature wear of the actual leather dress sole. So I'm going to just apply it to my cotton chamois. You can see that here and then just kind of massage it in. So it takes several applications. Just because again the leather sole absorbs this you know pretty readily. After you apply this you're going to want to allow at least an hour if not a little bit longer for the leather sole to fully absorb the sole guard and for it to set. It is a non slippery formulation and another thing that's nice about the sole guard is it's been modified so that it doesn't rub off once it's dried. Allow this at least an hour to dry. You can come on with a second application but if you do a second application you want to allow that at least six hours to dry before you actually try to wear your shoes. OK. So now that we've allowed the Saphir Sole Guard to dry overnight I just wanted to demonstrate the difference so this is the soul where I applied the soul guard and you can see the water just bead up and roll right off. Right. And so what that is that's the waterproofing that you get with the sole guard. On this shoe, I didn't apply the sole guard just because I wanted to demonstrate the difference and you can see how the water really kind of soaks in. It doesn't bead up like it does on this one. So you can see after having applied that water you can hardly see any water penetration on the sole that we applied the sole guard whereas the one that didn't have the sole guard the water saturated the sole. So the difference that that makes of the lifetime of the shoe is it just prevents the premature wear of the leather sole by reducing the amount of water that's really penetrating into the sole and that's it for the presidential shoeshine. Now you can see that the presidential shoe shine is a really thorough rigorous shine that really is only meant to be done once a year maybe twice a year depending on how often you're wearing your shoes.

As you can tell from these Cleverleys I mean they've really been given a completely new lease. They look fantastic I can't wait to wear them. If you have any questions about anything we've talked. Please ask them in the comments section below. I get back to all those questions personally if you like this video give us the thumbs up or better yet subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications so that you can learn whenever we post new videos. And of course please take a moment to visit HangerProject.com where we have the largest assortment of luxury garment care and shoe care accessories in the world. I'm Kirby Allison founder of The Hanger Project and thanks for joining us.