It’s obviously important to give care and protection also to the sole and heel edge on suede shoes with some shoe cream and maybe polish. It’s made of leather, and without care it dries out and looks really bad. When you put on the shoe cream you quite easily can end up with some of it on the suede, which is not ideal. Here I let you know how to easily get it off if you happen to make this mistake.

 

I got a question about this recently in the mail, and have been asked about it several times before, so thought it might be worth a separate post. When you put on shoe cream on the sole and heel edge on a suede shoe, I usually recommend that you do it with your index finger only, to get maximum control. It gets a little messy, but just wash your hands afterwards. It’s also good if you can have the shoe standing when you do this, since if you have them in your hand or in your lap, it’s easy to sway a little and get a dose shoe cream on the suede. If you still cause this, it’s usually quite easily solved as long as you go about things the right way.

A common failure many people make is that they happen to get some cream on the suede and direct they’re there with a cloth or paper or something and try to get it off as soon as they can. What usually happens is that you rub the cream into the fibers, and get a visible spot that can look dull. What you should do is not to touch the cream, but let it dry up so the cream hardens completely. It may take a couple of hours, I usually wait until the next day. As the suede (I assume …) is at least reasonably impregnated when you put on the cream it settles on the outside. When the cream then has dried, you rub it gently with a so-called cleaning block and it should come off quite easily, it simply crumble apart and detach. If you don’t have one of those use a suede brush with brass bristles or a regular eraser, it often works fine as well.