The Basics:

• Never wear your new shoes in the rain until they have been worn about 3 or 4 times.
• When your shoes do get wet, put shoe trees in them (or newspaper if you don’t have trees and let them dry at room temperature for at least 48 hours before you wear them again. Wet sole leather will wear out twice as quickly as dry sole leather.
• Before polishing them always wipe them over with a dry cloth to get rid of surface dirt
• Polish them with plenty of polish and allow them to sit with the polish on as long as possible. The ideal is to let the polish stay on overnight. Make sure you get plenty of polish into the welt and the crack between the upper and the sole.
• take off the excess polish with a brush or cloth and shine them up.
• If you have tan shoes you can darken them using a darker polish. Some people will go as far using black polish on tan shoes, instantly making them look very old.