Caring for Dress Shoes

Patent

A patent finish is a coating, not a leather surface, and it scuffs by picking up color from whatever it rubs against, usually the other shoe. Those marks are transferred material sitting on top of the coating: a damp cloth removes most of them, a soft eraser removes the rest. Do not use solvent, which lifts the coating along with the mark. Patent also creases permanently across the toe box, so do not force the foot in.

Glitter

Glitter is bonded to a fabric backing. It sheds a little on first wear and then stops. The thing that ruins it is water, which softens the bond and leaves dull patches, so a glitter shoe is an indoor shoe. Clean with a dry soft brush along the grain, never a wet cloth.

Nubuck and faux suede

Both are napped surfaces, which means the look depends on the fibers standing up. Brush them back up with a suede brush after each wear, in one direction. Marks that resist brushing come out with a suede eraser. Water spots these finishes badly and permanently, and neither is water resistant: 37 pairs in this catalog are explicitly stated as not water resistant.

Faux leather

The most common upper here. It cleans with a damp cloth and mild soap and needs nothing else. It does not take conditioner, and applying leather cream to it achieves nothing except a sticky surface. Heat is what destroys it, so keep it away from radiators and out of a car parked in the sun.

Heel tips

The plastic tip on a slim heel is a consumable. Once it wears through to the metal core the heel is loud, slippery and starts to damage floors, and the repair is more awkward than a replacement tip fitted early. Check the tips of a stiletto every few wears by turning the shoe over; on a block heel the same wear happens at the outside rear corner.

Slippery soles

A new sole is smooth. Rubber and synthetic rubber soles rough up quickly and grip well after that; a hard synthetic sole may not. Scuffing the sole deliberately on rough concrete before the first wear is the traditional fix and it works. Stick-on grip pads are the alternative and they are also what protects the sole from the wear that eventually opens it up.

Storage

Store heels upright and apart, not piled in a heap where the finishes rub against each other. Boots need something in the shaft or the leg collapses in a crease that never comes out again; a rolled magazine does the job as well as a boot shaper. Keep the original box if you have somewhere for it, because a box is the only storage that keeps light off a color.