Hi, I'm Kirby Allison. Here at The Hanger Project, we love to help the well-dressed
take care of their wardrobes. In today's video, I'm going to show you how to shine a
new pair of Allen Edmonds. Factory made shoes like these Allen
Edmonds don't receive any polishing at the
factory because there's no way to do this in
an efficient automated way. In order to polish a pair of new
shoes, it has to be done by hand. So whenever you receive a new pair
of Allen Edmonds, despite being as beautiful as they
are, they haven't been polished. So here at The Hanger Project, we always recommend that you take a
little bit of time to polish a new pair of shoes. The reason is that by polishing a new pair of shoes you're hydrating
the leather, you don't know how long that leather
has been sitting there without any type of
nourishment. And then second you're going to
build a really nice finish because of the waxes and the pigments and a high quality shoe polish like
the Saphir Medaille d'Or. So at the end of shining a new pair
of shoes, you've really brought those shoes to
life and given them dimension. And so because of that we absolutely recommend that you take a
little bit of time to shine a new pair of shoes. Today, I have a brand new pair of dark brown Allen Edmonds cap toe oxfords. These are beautiful shoes that are straight out of the box and as you can see they haven't been
polished. So although the finish is beautiful
because they're brand new, you don't see any depth or dimension because of the waxes of a nice shoe polish. Whenever I shine a new pair of shoes I like to start with a little bit of Saffir run of a
tour. Now the reason I start with Saphir Renovatour is going to
provide that deep nourishment and conditioning to the leather. Again, you don't know how long it's
been since these shoes were on the shelf and so it's just nice to make sure
that you're properly hydrating the leather before you're wearing them just to
keep that leather soft and supple. Here at The Hanger Project, we recommend using the Saphir
Pommadier Cream Polish, the high concentration of pigments
is going to do the best job recovering the leather and renewing the finish. Also the nice soft waxes are going to begin to build that protective wax finish that
really gives a shoe the pop that you want from them. Next I'm going to use some Saphir
Pate de Luxe Wax Polish the hard waxes in a wax polish are going to get continue to build that protective wax finish. Someone apply one or two coats on the entire shoe and then begin to build a nice kind of high gloss finish on the
caps. Now I'm not going to go crazy on
these shoes but I will use a little bit of our
dark brown sphere mirror glass to help
accelerate that process. So I'm going to use a little bit of
Saphir Mirror Gloss to just give a little bit of
dimension and differentiation from the caps
from the rest of the shoe. So lastly I'm going to
replace the laces with a pair of our
Sovereign Grade round waxed shoelaces. Our Sovereign Grade laces we have
made and Northhampton to the highest
standard and so it's just a more elegant
beautiful lace. Our Sovereign Grade laces are
available in 75 and 80 centimeter lengths. These are size 10 shoes and with 6 eyelets I'm going to use the longer 80 centimeter length just to ensure that the ends of the
laces are long enough to tie easily. If you have any questions during
this video please ask them in the comments section
below. I get back to all those questions
personally. The first step is to always
condition a new pair of shoes using the Saphir Renovateur. The Saphir Renovateur is like liquid
gold, it's a mink oil based cleaner
conditioner and it just does an incredible job
penetrating into leather and hydrating it. The reason that this is important with a new pair of shoes is that the leather has not been conditioned
since it left the tannery and you just don't know how long the leather has been sitting there. So I always like to condition a new
pair of shoes to just feed that leather which is probably a little bit dry
since it's been sitting on the shelf for a
while. So I'm going to remove the shoe
laces again as I mentioned earlier. I don't always remove the shoe laces
whenever I shine a pair of shoes because I
find that it places a lot of unnecessary strain
on the eyelets but with a new pair of shoes that
hasn't been laced, it's a great opportunity to
do so. So first, I'm going to apply the
Saphir Renovateur. I like to do so with just a cotton chamois. As you can see I've got one of our
Hanger Project Cotton Chamois here. This is different than the high
shine chamois in that it is plusher. And so I find that it actually does
a better job applying green polish with this chamois versus our high shine chamois. So just get a little bit of cream
polish on the tip the chamois and then you're just going to
massage it into the leather using a medium to firm pressure and small circular motions. Now you can really see how dry this
leather was because once I applied the cream polish you can see how it darkens. Just like with anything that's dry, if it darkens its color whenever you apply polished to it it just means the leather was
pretty dry. Just look at the hydration. I mean it's really incredible stuff. One of the things that I especially
appreciate about the Saphir Renovateur is how
versatile it is. You could really use it on almost any smooth leather from calfskin, to cordovan, to exotics so it's just a great kind of all purpose cleaner and conditioner. It doesn't have any pigment in it. So again you can use it on any shoe regardless of the color. And if you're only going to use one
product to polish your shoes without question it'd be the Saphir
Renovateur. After you've allowed the Saphir
Renovateur to a dry, buff it off with the horsehair
brush. Since these are dark brown shoes, I'm going to use my dark colored
bristle brush. And the reason that you would use a
dark colored bristle brush is more about just
keeping your dark polishes separate from your light polishes so that you
don't end up with any streaking. This is our Hanger Project 100% Pig Bristle Brush. After just one coat of the Saphir
Renovateur, you could really see how much better
these shoes are beginning to look. For one the beginning to shine
because the Saphir Renovateur contains soft waxes and second the patina, the depth of the shoe is beginning
to really come out as you're nourishing that leather and feeding it. You could always apply more than one
coat of the Saphir Renovateur. The more coats you apply, the deeper going to nourish the
leather. But here in this video I'm just
going to apply one. Step two, I'm going to apply the Saphir Pommadier Cream Polish. Now, a pigmented cream polish like
the Saphir Pommadier Cream is what we recommend for the primary use in polishing a pair of shoes. The reason is that when compared to a traditional wax polish like a hard wax polish, a cream polish is going to do a
better job nourishing the leather and also has a higher concentration of pigments in it that will do a
better job re-coloring the leather, renewing any scuffs or scratches and then just continuing to develop that patina and the depth of the finish itself. If you need any help choosing the
right color polish for your Allen Edmonds, take a look at our Allen Edmonds
shoe polish color guide video that we have on our YouTube channel. I'm going to apply this Saphir
Pommadier Cream Polish in the same way that I
applied the Saphir Renovateur, I'm going to use a
cotton chamois, and then just kind of dab it along the leather so that I don't get too much polish in any one area. And then I'm just going to massage
it into the leather again using medium to firm pressure and small circular motions. After you've applied the Saphir
Pommadier Cream Polish I set the shoe aside and allow it three or five minutes
to dry. So while the left shoe is drying, I'm going to apply Saphir Pommadier
Cream Polish to my right shoe. Now that the polish is dry I'm going
to buff out the polish using or Hanger Project horsehair
shoeshine brush. I'm using our large brush which honestly I prefer just because
the bristles are longer and I'm less likely to jam the shoe with the brush itself. All of our Hand Project brushes use 100 percent tail hair which is less
like the shed and as you can see we also pin all of her brushes to a higher
density so you just get a better buff using our brush than you do something that you'd otherwise find at your
local shoeshine store. Another reason I like to use
horsehair at this stage is again it's a softer hair than pig bristle and so it's just going to do a
better job buffing out the higher shine than what you get with the pig bristle brush which
is going to take more polish off. Now that I've got this polish dry I'm gonna buff it with a horsehair brush and you know what we're doing here
is the friction of the bristles against the leather is going to pull off any extra polish. And then it's going to begin to
shine those waxes. So at this point you can really see
a shine beginning to develop. I mean look at that after just one
coat of the Saphir Pommadier Cream
Polish, these shoes look fantastic. So again that's why I really
recommend shining a new pair of shoes, even though they're brand new out of
the box. They're never going to look as good
as they do with a little bit of polish. Another benefit of this Saphir Medaille d'OR Pommadier Cream Polish
is that it uses such a high quality wax that not only can you see that a
shine is produced with much more ease but it's also going to be longer
lasting. And so it just persists longer and it can be easily rebuffed by
just rebuffing with the horse hair brush. So there we go left shoe is done, I'm going to set that aside and then buff the right shoe. So here we are with just one coat of the Saphir Pommadier Cream Polish and you can really see the shoes
beginning to take a shine. I always like to apply two coats of
my Saphir Pommadier Cream Polish
because the pigments are going to do a better
job saturating that finish and it's just going to really deeply
condition that leather and begin to develop that soft
shine. Now one coat was great as you can
see two coats is even better. So I've applied two coats of the
Saphir Pommadier Cream Polish. I've nourished and conditioned the
leather even more than I did using the Saphir Renovateur. I've added pigment to help grow new and saturate the finish and then the soft waxes had begun to develop that nice soft shine that you expect in a beautiful pair
of dress shoes. Step three is to apply the Saphir Pate De Luxe wax polish. The hard waxes in a proper wax
polish are going to begin to build that
really high shine. You want to be a little careful in
how you apply a hard wax polish because if you apply too much across the vamp you'll end up with cracking or a wide residue. So I like to apply one coat of the wax polish to the entire shoe and then I'll come back and begin to build up more of a high gloss shine just on the toe cap and then optionally on the heel quarters. The reason you want to concentrate
the high gloss shine on the toe in the heel
quarters is because that's the hard countered
area of the shoe. Basically these areas of the shoe are reinforced with a hard piece of leather that doesn't flex or bend so you don't have to worry about the waxes cracking like what you would across the vamp. I really prefer using our high shine
chamois when applying waxes. Now our Hanger Project High Shine
chamois we have made out of a super 180 cotton shirting and it just has a really tight
weave. You don't have to worry about any
fuzz getting onto the finish and disrupting the shine. So this is really the cloth of choice for applying wax polishe. S so I have a dark brown Saphir Pate de Luxe Wax Polish. And I'm going to apply it using the high shine chamois. My first coat is going to be the entire shoe. And then what I'm going to do is
concentrate this just on the cap to really begin that
build that high shine. I have the first coat of Saphir Pate de Luxe applied to the
entire shoe and allowed three to five
minutes to dry. And then I'm going to buff
it off using a special technique. I'll show you about a moment. Now that the first coat of the Saphir Pate de Luxe Wax Polish is
dry, I'm going to buff off the wax, not using a horsehair brush but instead using my high shine
cotton chamois with a little bit of water. Now one little trick to get a really
fast shine is actually to use cold water. So I took the water for this out of the refrigerator. And again the cold water just does a better job hardening those waxes as you buff it off. So I've got a little bit of water on
my chamois. And I'm just going to began polishing this really quickly. You can actually just dab a little
bit of wax polish onto the chamois and that helps also. So this is more about really
bringing that wax polish up to a high shine than it is about buffing it off. You can still buff it up using a
horsehair brush if you don't have the time to do
this but I just find that using the high shine chamois, a little bit of cold water and just a little bit of wax polish is going to produce a higher glass shine than buffing with the horsehair brush alone. We actually outlined this method in another video called the Berluti method and this is one of the ways that
Olga Berluti was able to develop such a high
gloss shine on her shoes is she actually didn't
use any cream polish at all. She primarily used wax polish with cold water. She'd actually use ice water. And a nice cotton chamois like this. As you can see the hard waxes in the Saphir Pate de Luxe are really
beginning to elevate this shine, so I'm going to actually apply just
a little bit more of a wax polish onto the toe cap and let this dry while I buff off the wax polish on the
right shoe. And then what I'm going to do next
is introduce the Mirror Gloss and just show you how quickly with just a little bit of work using the Mirror Gloss you can
elevate the shine of the cap and how nice of an effect that does, really providing just a nice little
shine. Now that I buffed the wax polish of
the entire shoe using my chamois I'm going to apply a little bit more Pate de Luxe Wax Polish onto the cap itself and I'll set this aside and allow it to dry and then after I'm done with this shoe, we're going to transition to really concentrating in the cap to develop
a little bit of a higher gloss shine right
there. Okay so I've finished applying the
Saphir Pate de Luxe to the entire shoe and now I'm going to transition to
really focusing just on the cap. Now that cap is hard countered and what that means is that there is
an additional piece of hard leather that stiffens this area of the shoe to prevent it from flexing. It's what allows the cap to hold its
shape but that also allows you to develop a nice high gloss shine on the cap without having to worry about it cracking. So the way that I'm going to do
this, and it's completely optional is I'm going to use the Saphir Mirror Gloss combined with the Saphir Pate de Luxe to
really build that foundation of hard waxes to allow us to get a nice higher gloss shine. The level of shiny you have in your
toe caps one of the first things people notice
whenever they see you so spending a little bit of
extra time developing a higher gloss shine in
your toe caps just sends the message that you're
someone that minds the details and should be taken seriously. I'm going to show you that using the
Saphir Mirror Gloss it's really quite easy to
develop a higher gloss shine in your toe caps. The technique to develop a high
gloss shine on the toe cap is totally different
than the rest of the shoe. What you want to do is you want to
apply the wax polish, allow it to dry, and then just put a little bit of
water on the toe cap itself. Dab a little bit of Saphir Pate de Luxe. You're just going to buff the toe
cap using light to medium pressure, a little bit of water, until a high shine begins to develop. You're going to repeat this process
until reach your desired level of shine. Developing a high shine on the toes
just takes patience and time. It's not something that you can rush and in the beginning it's going to
look like you're making no progress. But then it all comes together right
at the end. Ok so I've got that first coat of the Pate de Luxe Wax Polish
developed and nice shine. Now this is the point where I'm
going to bring in the mirror glass. This is a new tin of our dark brown Mirror Gloss, it's one of the
newest colors we've added. The Saphir Medaille d'Or Mirror Gloss is really a quite
incredible product, it's a product that we had Saphir
developed especially for us and it has a much higher
concentration of hard waxes and a much lower concentration of the solvents. So it's a totally different wax than
the PAte de Luxe and it's perfect for just developing that foundation of the mirror shine. So what I'm going to do is I'm going
to use the Saphir Mirror Gloss to develop that
foundation of hard waxes and then I like to come on top of it using that Pate de Luxe which has a higher solvent
concentration and really buff it to a nice high shine. I find that the solvents in the Pate de Luxe almost melt the waxes and that's what allows it to really
buff to high shine. I have a nice coat of the Mirror Gloss
applied to this cap, now I'm gonna set this
aside. Because the Mirror Gloss has such a high concentration of hard waxes it actually dries quite quickly. But I'm going to give it a few
minutes to dry while I'm buffing off the first coat
of the Pate de Luxe off the right shoe. The Mirror Gloss is a really dry
polish that just doesn't have much solvents in
it. The solvents are what's going to
melt that wax and really help you shine it and produce that high gloss
shine. So the water helps and I find that the water with the Pate de Luxe Wax Polish is like magic. That's not to say that you couldn't
just use the Mirror Gloss and a little bit of water. You know that would work also. I just find that the Pate de Luxe just makes it that much more
efficient. But I like to use the Pate de Luxe as the first coat because again the
rich solvents in the Pate de Luxe is
going to help penetrate that leather. And begin to saturate the pores of the leather to allow you to
develop that mirror shine. So at its foundation the mirror
gloss process is really a three step process in and of itself. First you prime the leather using the more solvent rich Pate de Luxe then you begin to build that foundation of hard wax is using the Saphir Mirror Gloss and then you finish it off with just a little bit of water and a tiny amount of Pate de Luxe to really glacage and elevate that high shine. So we're on the third step of this
process so I'm going to apply a little bit
of water to my chamois. Just just enough to dab my Pate de Luxe wax polish and then I'm going to begin to buff those hard waxes and the Mirror Gloss to shine. Now again this is the part of the
process that you really can't rush. You want to use light pressure a little bit of water just a little bit of a Pate de Luxe Wax Polish because you want to
pick up those solvents and you're just going to watch this
kind of melt the waxes into a beautiful high gloss shine. And you just need patience, with enough time that high shine really will come through. And then of course depending on the
desired level of shine you can do this
multiple times. So depending on the desired depth of shine You can repeat this process as many times as you'd like. Once you begin to feel your chamois
drag across the leather that's the point
you need to add a little bit more water just to help lubricate the chamois and to prevent it from scratching or disrupting this nice mirror gloss surface you're begining
to develop. So what you're doing at a
fundamental level here is you're filling the pores of the open grain leather with wax and that's what allows you
to create a smooth surface that shines. And so as you do this you have to
apply the wax polish, allow it to dry, and then buff it to a shine, and you're essentially just building
a bunch of layers until finally it's completely glassy smooth and that's what creates a mirror
shine. Now it's not to say that you'd have
to spend 30 minutes doing this or an hour. Even just a little bit of work like what you see I'm doing
right here develops enough of a high shine that the cap really begins to stand out from the
rest of the shoe. And that to me is really the goal
that you're going for here you just want enough of a
shine that the cap stands out and someone can tell that you spent
a little bit of extra time actually shining your shoes. You'll never see anything like this
at a shoe stand because anyone that's shining a pair of shoes in a
shoeshine stand is just looking to do the shoe shine process as quickly as possible. So this is something you're really
only going to do yourself. You're not going to find anyone
that's going to spend 30, 45 minutes shining your shoes for you. Part of the hazard of developing a high shine in the cap is you can
really get sucked into this you can just
absolutely fall into it end up spending, it's almost hypnotizing, you get
hypnotized by the shoe and end up spending way more time developing the mirror shine than you intended on the onset and that's half the fun. I mean once you really learn how to
shine a pair of shoes you begin to really enjoy it. I mean I find it to be tremendously therapeutic. And you know whenever I'm wearing my
shoes I just have a different level of
pride knowing that you know I've taken
great care of them and that they look absolutely
incredible. I've truly been surprised as I've
traveled around the world, the number of gentlemen that I've met that you would never suspect actually enjoy shining their shoes
themselves. And these are people that you know
have the means to easily pay someone else to do it, yet it's something that they prefer to do themselves. It should also not come as a
surprise that a man with a properly shined pair of shoes is always treated better than one without. Whether it's at the airport or at a restaurant. You can always see whenever someone
glances down and takes a look at your shoes. OK I'm getting carried away I'm
going to have to stop myself but I've got an absolutely
incredible shine here. I could easily spend another 10 or 15 minutes and get this to be like glass. But in the interest of this video
I'm going to set this one aside and begin working on the right shoe. So I finished doing the mirror shine
on the cap toe have these Park Avenues. And again this is really something you can fall into and just lose track of time. So I always try to step away from
the mirror shine process which is to give me a
little separation from the shoe. Sometimes I'll even put them on the
floor to look at them from a realistic
distance because inevitably if you're doing
the mirror shine and it's right in front of your eyes you're going to see tiny
imperfections in the mirror shine that just aren't going to make a
difference in the big scheme of things once
you're wearing the shoes. I'm going to replace these Park
Avenues using our Sovereign Grade shoelaces that we have made exclusively for
us. Here at The Hanger Project, we're proud to have one of the
widest and most comprehensive collection of dress shoe laces available anywhere in the world. All of our Sovereign Grade Laces are
made exclusively for us and Northampton, which is the center of the British
shoe making industry and they're made to the just the
absolute highest quality standard. Unquestionably prefer our Sovereign
Grade Laces to the standard laces that
come in the Allen Edmonds shoes because it's woven with a much finer thread and it just produces a more elegant lace to me than the standard Allen Edmond one. If you have any questions about
which size shoelace to choose, just take a look at our sizing guide
that we have on every shoelace listing. I chose 80 centimeters for this shoe
because it's a size 10 and has six eyelets so it's going to
consume a little bit more shoelace than a standard five eyelet shoe would. My preferred method for lacing shoes is with the straight across or barbell method. Just because I find it's much
neater. We have a full video on how to do
this on our YouTube channel. But the general format is quite easy. You want to start the laces and get them to be approximately the same length. Now, I've never been able to lace my
shoes and end up with them exactly at the same length in the first
time. I would say don't worry too much
about that you could always adjust the final length after you're
done. And then what you're going to do is
you're going to go across and up. And then back down through the
eyelet. And then this is the important part
you alternate, and you're skipping every other row. So I'm skipping from here to here. And then going down. Up. Aross. Down. Out. I'm going to insert the shoe tree. And then I'm going to tie the shoe
using our Berluti Knot. Now we have a video on the website
on how to do this. Of all of the different lacing methods, the Berluti knot
unquestionably is my favorite. Because one, it is in effect a double knot. And then secondly it is the most symmetric of all the different knots. And how you tie your shoelace, again it's just one of those small little differentiators that kind of
sets you apart from the rest of the
crowd. As you can see even a new pair of Allen Edmonds can use a first
polish. Just spending a little bit of extra
time polishing these new shoes has transformed what was a beautiful pair of Allen
Edmonds to an absolutely incredible pair that is really going to stand out in
a crowd of other shoes. The extra time spent developing the
mirror shine in the cap really to me is the final
touch that sets these shoes apart. I mean having a nice shine on a pair
of shoes certainly is going to set you apart from 99
percent of the other men out there. But having a nice mirror shine on
the toe is that final extra step that just really takes these
shoes into the stratosphere. I can't impress to you enough how
big a difference a little bit of shoe
polish makes on even a new pair of shoes. Just to summarize how to shine a new
pair of Allen Edmonds. First we started with the Saphir Renovateur to
provide the deep nourishment and conditioning to the
leather. Then I used two coats of the Saphir Pommadier Cream Polish, again that pigmented cream polish is
going to help renew the finish and then begin to add those soft
waxes that's going to elevate the shine. Then I applied one coat to the
entire shoe using the Saffir Pate de Luxe, again the hard waxes are going to elevate that shine even further, and then the next step is I elevated
the shine on the toe. The hard countered part
of the shoe to a nice mirror shine using a three step process, alternating between the Saphir Pate de Luxe, the Mirror Gloss, and back to the Pate de Luxe. And the last step of any new shoe
shine with a pair of Allen Edmonds is to
switch out the laces with a pair of our Sovereign Grade
laces. An old worn pair of shoe laces can
even make a beautifully polished pair of
shoes look shabby. So that's why I always recommend
switching out the standard shoe laces with a pair of our premium Sovereign Grade shoelaces. If you have any questions about
anything I discuss in this video please ask them in the
comments section below. I get back to all those
questions personally and of course please visit
hangerproject.com where we have the largest, most comprehensive collection of luxury garment care and shoe care accessories in the
world as well as other accessories for the
well-dressed. And while you're there, subscribe to our newsletter to
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you know when we release new videos. I'm Kirby Allison and we love helping the well-dressed
take care of their wardrobes. Thanks for joining us.
