Are you using the right polish for your fine leather shoes? While wax polishes tend to be the most common polish you'll find in stores, it doesn't mean you're giving your shoes the royal treatment.
Products used in this video:
Saphir Pommadier Cream Polish
Saphir Pate de Luxe Wax Polish
Cotton Chamois Cloth
Medium Horsehair Brush
Using Cream Polish
The purpose of this guide is to explain the differences between wax and cream polishes, and how to use both to keep the best care possible of your leather dress shoes. The fundamental difference between wax and cream polish is that a cream polish is more for nourishment and recoloring, and a wax polish is primarily for providing those hard waxes to create a high shine. Wax polish has a higher concentration of hard waxes, which provides a barrier to the shoe that protects it from any type of water, light scuffs, and scratches. You want to be careful about applying too much wax to the areas of the shoe that bend, like the vamp, because once those hard waxes dry, if you bend the shoe, the waxes are going to crack and provide or produce a white substance across that area.
To begin, if your shoes aren’t too dirty, simply buff them off with a horsehair brush to remove surface dirt. First apply the cream polish. The Saphir Medaille D'Or Pommadier Cream Polish comes in 13 different colors. Now the important thing to remember with color matching is you just want to get close, because it’s almost impossible to find an exact match. Using a cotton chamois, massage the cream polish into the leather with moderate to firm pressure. Use enough polish to cover the surface of the entire shoe, but you don’t want so much that you see visible build-up. You can let the cream polish dry for as long as you want, even overnight. After you've allowed the cream polish to absorb into the leather, then take a horsehair shoe shine brush and you want to buff that polish off the shoe.
Using Wax Polish
Your shoe should already have a pretty nice shine, but if you desire a higher gloss shine, then that's when you would come on top with a wax polish. One of the most important things that differentiates this wax polish from other polishes is out there is that it uses an all-natural pine base turpentine, versus petroleum products other polishes use that may damage your shoes. The other thing is that it uses a high concentration of beeswax, which produces that nice, hard wax finish that's going to give your shoes a beautiful shine.
Put enough wax polish onto your chamois so that it's not gunky, and then start applying the Saphir Medaille D'Or Pate De Luxe Wax Polish the same way that you did with the cream polish. The first one or two coats you can take across the entire shoe, but beyond one or two coats you want to avoid the vamp because once that hard wax dries, and you go outside and you begin walking in your shoe, you will see those hard waxes break and produce a little white buildup. Then let the wax dry for 3-5 minutes, and finish by buffing the shoe with a horsehair brush until you see a nice shine.
