How To Care For Your Leather Shoes

On the trials and tribulations of shoe care. Plus: a mixed bag from the 50% off sale happening at Neiman Marcus.

Jun 04, 2025

This image may contain Clothing Shoe Footwear Apparel Human and Person — Photo courtesy, GQ.

Hello everyone, happy Wednesday. It’s hump day. Up top, I have some headlines for you. Then, today’s WCME feature is about giving longevity to your leather shoes. For the shopping edit, I curated a summery selection from the Neiman Marcus up to 50% off sale. Let’s get to it:

I decided to keep the very cheerful Hermès Tie model that appeared in yesterday’s newsletter on for the rest of the week. Something about his vibe clicked with me. It makes me miss the silly side of fashion.
Derek Blasberg recently joined Substack. I enjoyed reading his letter yesterday about a gentler time in fashion in the early 2010’s. I can vividly remember the launch of Instagram, posting my first picture in NYC, checking into basically everywhere I went on Facebook, and running every photo through a sepia-toned filter without the qualms of cancel culture, trolls, or overall Internet nastiness.
Now, on the few occasions I do doomscroll, I feel like I am going through a product car wash. I hate the algorithm. Substack somehow has created a space to scroll through from the subscription economy. It feels lighter than the current environment on major social medias, even TikTok. You should check out Derek’s Substack.
Maesteg Calfskin Loafers, $995.
During my lunch break today I went to a Church’s private sale on 229 Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. I didn’t ultimately buy anything. Even with a 40% discount, the shoes I wanted were selling for north of $600. The private sale seemed better curated for a finance bro.
While I was looking through the collection, I eavesdropped on a sale (I know). What makes shoppers tick these days? I overheard a Bank of America banker, who’s Irish and will be moving back to Ireland after an expat-stint in Paris, tell the sales clerk: “I’ve never owned a pair of Church’s, but all my colleagues have a pair, so I figured I should get one too”. Talk about the uniform being the driver behind a Wall Street office.
As a smoky Pembrey Loafer owner myself, I am happy to report that Church’s has softened their leather a little. I tried on this pointy deerskin shoe. And this ultra-soft one. The leather was wonderfully supple. Butter soft. My hunch is, one no longer needs to go through the bloody crusades my pinky toes went through 5 years ago when I got my first pair of Church’s. It’s a leather renaissance. And that’s a relief.
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WCME: How To Care For Your Leather Shoes

What Caught My Eye is a daily column about internet culture, people you should know about, business, shopping, and fashion.

**Photo courtesy, Church’s SS 2025 campaign.**

When I get an investment pair of shoes, I tell myself, “these shoes are for a lifetime.” The reviews tell you that a pair of Church’s can last up to 10 years. They’re the same price of an iPhone, and these days, an iPhone rarely lasts longer than 4 years.

The truth is that how long a pair of Church’s, a Celine leather bag, a Burberry scarf, or a Moncler puffer will last very often depends more on you, than it does on the brand itself. Of course there is always the possibility of a defect, but from experience, there is a lot you can do to increase the longevity of your shoes. I am here to tell you how to take good care of your investments.

If you buy a Celine bag, you can get the bag pampered by the boutique up to once per year. It’s good to apply cream and product to leather, but you don’t want to smother it. Most brands offer a tailored variation of these services. If you own a Moncler hoodie, you should dry-clean it no more than once or twice per year. And for the shoes?

Substack’s

JAKE WOOLF

wrote the essential guide on shining your shoes for GQ nearly a decade ago. You can read it and see the video here. And the piece still resonates.

“These days, thanks in part to the prevalence of sneakers in all their rubberized comfortability, the art of a good shoe shine seems to have been lost a bit”, he said in 2015. The nouveau verve in classic dressing makes it an ideal time to dust off this article for a read. Shoes are in metaphor, the vehicle to the outfit.

After owning my smoky Pembrey’s for about 5 years, I have pretty much juiced the loafers for all the mileage they could have ever given me. But I did make some mistakes along the way. Nothing terrible, just an audit on shoe care. Some rules to follow:

If you have them on an active rotation, you should shine your leather shoes quarterly. I get mine shined at the Bon Marché in Paris, where they offer a great cobbling service at reasonable prices. Alternatively, your neighborhood cobbler will also do. Extra points if you do it yourself. Why is it important?
Leather is a natural skin, and its exposure to external agents does eventually dry the leather hide. Over the years (and this is what happened to my Pembrey’s), if you don’t nourish them, they risk to dry and crack in places where the leather creases, such as in the ball of your foot. Consider shoe cream the SPF of shoes.

**R.I.P. my 5 year-old Church’s Pembreys.**

Don’t wear them in the rain. I am guilty as charged for puddle-hopping on certain occasions in fabulously expensive shoes. The truth is, I just hadn’t checked the weather app that day. There is no shame in rain boots. If by accident you did wear them out during a drizzle, dry them out with a paper cloth once you get to the office. Then, brush them up to shape on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Use a shoe tree. This is probably the best way of keeping your shoes smiling, and wrinkle-free. Church’s offers an excellent cedarwood shoe tree that sucks in the moisture from a busy spring day about town.