The leather still needs to be nourished in order to prevent from cracking. Using a conditioning product will help to clean, condition and protect your shoes.

How often do you need to shine your shoes?

Because of its very high concentration of nutritious components and waxes, shining once per week after wearing them few times is enough. Everyday if there is a mirror shine on the shoes, you can buff them with a pig hair brush or with a shining cloth. Just in case you has been through an extremely bad weather, water, snow, you should let them dry peacefully with a wooden shoetree away from any height and then you should shine them. (We advice to not wear your shoes everyday, in order to leave the leather time to dry and rest that way you would be able to extend their life time).

How to treat a shoe that is both, suede and smooth leather?

When taking care of a shoe that is made from a combination of suede and smooth leather, it is best to use our Universal Shampoo, thanks to its formulation, is the perfect choice for cleaning most materials: smooth leather, nubuck suede, velvety leather, textiles, crepe, stretch, « tex » material, synthetic materials.

With its foaming action, it offers a deep clean, removing dirt and stains whilst preserving the structure of the material.

We generally advise you to remove old waxes if it contains any other product than Saphir and polish before conditioning the leather so the skin can really absorb all the oils. It is enough though to do this once a month. If you prefer a Mirror Shine on your shoes, you can leave the wax buildup on the toe area so it will be easier to bring this part of the shoe back to high shine. The vamp of the shoe, the area that flexes, should be cleaned properly though because it is important that leather stays hydrated here so it won’t crack over time.

The Cleaning Lotion has stronger cleaning properties while the Creme Universelle is more suitable for general care.

Basically these two products are developed for the same purpose which is to achieve a really high shine on your shoes as easy as possible. These two polishes don’t contain cleaning or nourishing ingredients but are merely designed to give your shoes a nice mirror shine as fast as possible. In order to achieve that they contain special hard waxes that create the shine.
The difference between the Amiral Gloss and the Mirror Gloss lies in their formulation. The Amiral Gloss is part of our Beauté du Cuir range and is a great product for high shines, the Mirror Gloss is part of our premium Médaille d’Or Range and has a special formula developed together with professional shoe shiners, and an even higher concentration of hard waxes.

Generally speaking yes, but to take care of such a unique leather like Cordovan we highly recommend to use our Cordovan Cream which has been developed especially for that. While the Renovateur contains lanolin and mink oil, the Cordovan Cream contains neats-foot oil. This is important since Cordovan leather gets treated with neats-foot oil at the tannery to achieve the desired high oil content which gives the leather its waterproof qualities. To maintain the oil content in the leather it is best to use the same kind of oil as used by the tannery and the Cordovan Cream has a formula that is developed to maintain the high oil content that Cordovan requires. The Renovateur Cream is developed for smooth leathers in general which require a lower amount of oil. Therefore it is best to use the Cordovan Cream for all Cordovan leathers.

Is the Renovateur safe to use on white shoes/sneakers or will it
colour the leather?

Yes, our Renovateur Cream is completely colourless and safe to use on white leathers. Nevertheless, we would recommend a cream that will give more pigment like the White Novelys.

I want to clean my shoes but I find the Reno’Mat too strong, what
can I do?

The Reno’Mat has great cleaning qualities that can deal with even the most resilient stains. Sometimes, especially for regular cleaning, this can be too strong though and for that our product range offers great alternatives for a more gentle cleaning. The Cleaning Lotion for example contains a significant amount of carnauba wax which brings after polishing, protection and shine.

This product is a very effective
addition to the range of cleaning products offering an alternative to the use of Réno’mat when it is not necessary to remove all the finishing products that have been applied to the surface of the leather. For consumers who regularly use the products Saphir without resin or silicone and still want to clean them, the use of Universal Cream, in this case, proved definitely too soft. It offers this perfect compromise between these two products, one sometimes too strong, the other sometimes too soft.