Advices and Care
Maintenance and Polishing (with cream)
Choose a cream that has a slightly lighter color than the leather to preserve its tint (unless you want to accentuate it, in which case you should choose a slightly darker colored cream). Dust the shoe with an appropriate brush. Apply the cream with two fingers together wrapped in a piece of cloth. Proceed in small light circular movements. Little circles appear, and their sheen will increase with each application. The more it increases, the less cream you need on the cloth. After letting the shoes dry, shine them with a soft brush.
Glazing (with polish)
In order to get a great sheen, continue buffing but replace the cream with polish. Apply it by spreading it on the piece of cloth, instead of concentrated samples. Massage the leather with the same lightness in the same circular movements. Finish each application by wetting the cloth with a drop of water, which will glaze the polish. Give a final rub with a cotton cloth, best done when you are wearing the shoes and about to leave. The cream you need to apply is made of bees wax and lanolin, any silicone based composition should be excluded when choosing your polish. Use our exclusive John Foster polish.
Here are the main rules to follow imperatively
First of all, you should have at least four pairs of shoes, each shoe being worn for a day before resting for 48 hours. Wearing the same pair three or four days in a row is a mistake because the heat and humidity caused by sweat burn leather from the inside, causing the shoe to have a shorter life span. Note that wooden shoetrees, that should be placed in the shoe right after taking them off, are essential. Shape is to a shoe what a hanger is to a suit. The shoe tree enables the shoe to dry and rest its shape without distortion or unwanted creases. Be careful : plastic shoetrees aren’t effective as they don’t enable the evaporation of humidity and distort the shoe as they don’t keep the shape of the shoe. Finally, note that using a shoetree should become a habit.