Accessories Supply C
As you can see in the pictures, Renovateur was far more effective in smoothing out the scuffs I had generated over the course of several wears (the DC Metro system does your shoes no favors). The shoe treated with Renovateur also had fewer small wrinkles (the larger ones remained on both shoes—no conditioner is a miracle worker) in the crease points where the toe box bends. Mayes mostly attributed this result to Renovateur’s superior nourishing qualities.Shoe care supply The only major concern he had about Renovateur involved its packaging. It comes in a squat, wide-mouthed glass jar that looks more like a container of expensive face cream than a shoe product. And as with an expensive face cream, a little bit goes a long way. He noted that a dime-sized dab would be good enough to cover at least half of one shoe—meaning that three dimes’ worth of product would be good enough for one shine. Following this guideline, a 75-ml jar should last you at least 100 or so conditioning treatments. Unfortunately, Mayes said, the wide mouth means that an overzealous person could easily kill the jar in five or so polishes, and that "for the price it’s sold for, I wouldn’t be surprised if a customer I sold this product to came back upset if they ended up using too much." The key to avoiding that situation is to dab with Renovateur rather than to pour it out. Venetian Leather Balm suffers from the same problem as Saphir Renovateur: It comes in an open-top container (though one that’s decidedly more utilitarian-looking than the Renovateur jar), which means that overuse is a very real possibility. In our tests, while Renovateur’s consistency was closer to that of a lotion, Venetian Leather Balm’s consistency was akin to that of a toner—nearly liquid. This meant that Stanley Mayes had to be diligent about keeping his rag moving along the shoe, lest the product absorb unevenly into one spot and not thoroughly nourish another. Lexol Leather Conditioner comes in a shampoo-bottle-like container, which in our tests made controlling the amount that came out significantly easier. The consistency was somewhere in between that of Renovateur and Venetian Leather Balm—not really a lotion but not really a liquid, like a homemade salad dressing. And the Lexol conditioner itself took somewhere in between the time of the other two products to absorb into the leather. Although the precise formulation of Venetian Leather Balm is not available, I have heard several shoe-care and menswear experts speculate that it contains a higher level of solvent. In practice, Venetian Leather Balm absorbed the fastest into the leather; however, Mayes mentioned that the fast absorption may have happened partially because the elevated level of solvent meant that the substance was also dissipating into the atmosphere.