What shoe polish for Grant Stone loafers in color #8?
Hey everyone, I've got some relatively new loafers from Grant Stone in #8 chromexcel. I know Saphir makes an actual #8 cream for shell cordovan, but my dad told me that back in the day they'd use black polish on cordovan shoes, deepening the red/burgundy color that it starts as. I'm also wondering if these #8s from Grant Stone is not as dark as say Alden cordovan No. 8, which at least on Alden's website looks significantly darker, almost black.
7 Replies
I personally wouldn't polish CXL. If you want a way to reduce the scuffs I'd get some venetian shoe cream and just use that very rarely. Lots of brushing as well.
CXL is a very oily and casual leather and I personally don't think it takes to polishing very well because of that
Maybe I didn't mean polish; Saphir makes a shoe cream in a number of colors, would that also work?
What are you looking to do?
I suppose my question is two fold; I want to make sure I'm properly caring for these given the leather type and color (I've seen some people recommend bick 4 or VSC, and also see that Saphir makes a cxl specific cream), and also was wondering if anyone else had heard of deliberately using a black cream (not polish in this case because cxl) for color #8 shoes, or if I should just stick to natural?
The color question I'm particularly keen on because these #8 shoes look much redder in person than I thought #8 would be
Gotcha, I have all of your answers!
Proper Care: CXL is a very resilient and a more casual leather (generally speaking) than ones you would want to polish. I'd follow just my guide here for the basics. They won't need more than that. For CXL I do really like Saphir renovateur or VSC but bick 4 also works super well.
The CXL specific creams just feel like a waste to me. VSC is used in the production of CXL iirc so it's the "best" imo and works really nicely on other leathers. I prefer to have more general products than hundreds of dollars in leather-specific ones.
I've used color #8 and black creams on shell cordovan color #8 shoes to make minor color adjustments so it's not unheard of. However, shell takes dye very differently than any other leather. These are CXL and so I'd ignore the stuff related to shell entirely.
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Thank you!! And yeah it looks like #8 CXL comes out quite differently than #8 shell, and I can see how back in the day my dad would use black on #8 shell