patent leather shoes maintenance

Anonymous · 10th February 2002, 09:39

i love patent leather heels n boots
especially to wear those patent boots with very long and pointy toes..
but unfortunately, i think a pair of very expensive patent leather shoes are not made for walking outside in the crowdy streets or messy offices,

Jezebel · 3rd April 2002, 23:15

I think there's a time and place for any shoe. If you want to wear your expensive shoes out in the city, do it. Just take care of them. As long as you're sensible, I don't think just walking in the city would do much damage.

Firefox · 7th April 2002, 00:58

I'm not a fan of patent leather, but I agree it can be ruined if the shine gets scratched. It's easier to restore the surface of natural leather shoes.

ShockQueen · 17th April 2002, 04:17

Is there any cure if the surface gets scratched at all? I would think with the numerous products out there, someone would have thought of it.

Firefox · 1st May 2002, 20:39

Posted by postcode:

My wife has two pair of patent heels that need some work to them. One is a black pair with some pretty bad scuf marks on the toe and th eother is a white pair with a black mark on one of the heels. When I was in the military, we used barbasol (regular shaving cream) to get a real nice shine on our low quarters. I've used this same method on her heels and the end result is spectacular, but it dosen't do a thing for scufs and marks. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix these?

PostCode · 4th May 2002, 03:03

I was able to remove the black mark on the white shoes almost entirely (very very very faint residue) using a warm to hot warm cloth and some good ol' enbow grease. It came out pretty quickly also. I just had to get the wash cloth pretty warm. I first started with some luke warm water. It did remove some of it, but not a lot. Using hotter water helped a lot. The mark in nearly completely gone.

Laurieheels · 18th May 2002, 20:14

This issue really plagues me. Patent is the easiest for me to obtain in a five inch heel, because I lack money for real leather. Fetish people like patent, I guess. But the shoes are difficult to maintain, and the finish can be scraped off.

I do have a white paint smudge on my five inchers, I may use Postcode's suggestion of heat and effort to see what happens. It wasn't fresh paint, I must have hit my foot on something and the white just transferred. Much like cars exchange paint in an accident.

azraelle · 20th May 2002, 02:10

I haven't owned a pair of patent leather shoes since the military, and I never thought of trying this then, so I can't vouch for whether this suggestion is worth trying or not: Would a thin application of clear base coat nail enamel work to hide the scratches (or at least tone them down) or, alternatively, black enamel, or black model airplane "dope"?

SarahLou · 24th July 2006, 19:46

Did anyone ever try using nail enamel to cover up the scratches?[/quote]

hart88 · 25th July 2006, 00:14

don't use baby oil, or vaseline...!!
they appear to clean the patent, but eventually will build up like oil, and then your shoes/boots/purses will look grungy...

You need a patent leather cleaner that says Patent leather Cleaner.
I always use a two rag process, (lint free rags) using the first rag to apply the wet chemical...with the wet rag, concentrate on the marks, grung, etc.
It seems that black patent gets white streaks, and white patent gets black streaks...go figure...
With the second clean rag, I use it to both clean more, and use a buffing action to shine the material....You notice I keep saying material, some patent leather is a manufactured product on top of leather, some patent leather is really Vinyl! (You can look at seams, and leather looks like a cut skin, and vinyl loooks like cloth) keep rotating to a new clean spot on the rags for both processes for best results...

I have luggage crayons that I use for fixing scratches... Clean the spots as good as possible, then take an artistic crayon, and color the scratch, sometimes it works going length wise in the scratch, sometimes it works better to go back and forth across the scratch... Practice makes perfect.
Then take that clean rag and buff off excess wax from the scratch, and then proceed to use a polishing motion to shine the area... Some of those instant shine sponges, or a spray shine works to restore lustre.
make sure that you don't overdue the spray shine, it works better to try to disguise the scratch, rather than covering it up too much. I also have found out that URAD polish seems to work great also...the moral of the story is to do a good job, don't try to over do it...