Famaco Green Apple Leather Beauty Cream 373 – 50ml Creme de Beaute

Description

Famaco Green Apple Leather Beauty Cream 373 – 50ml Creme de Beaute, a true mid grass green, fifty millilitres of pigmented French wax cream, made to keep a bright green shoe looking deliberate rather than dusty and neglected

A green shoe is almost always bought for one occasion. There is a wedding in July, a race meeting, a birthday, and the pair is chosen to be seen from across a lawn. Then the day passes, the shoes go back in the box, and they surface eighteen months later for the next invitation looking flat and slightly dusty. Nobody owns enough green shoes to have learned how to keep them.

Apple 373 is the shade for that pair. It is a proper mid green with plenty of yellow in it, the colour of a bramley skin rather than a bottle or a pine tree, and it belongs on the bright greens people buy. There is pigment enough to bring a scuffed heel back into line.

Bright apple green cream, fifty millilitres, in a lidded French jar, priced £6.49.

Why choose this apple green shoe cream?

• It is bright without turning acid. Read off the surface of the cream, this lands in the middle of the range for both depth and intensity, which is the narrow band a wearable green lives in. Brighter looks like a highlighter on leather, duller reads as olive, and neither matches the shoe you bought.
• Plenty of yellow in the mix. Green divides between the yellow side and the blue side, and matching the wrong half is the commonest mistake in this whole colour family. Apple sits firmly on the yellow side, so it belongs on grass, lime and bramley shoes rather than on emerald, bottle or racing green ones.
• Strong enough for a knocked heel. Bright leather shows damage that a dark shoe hides completely. One good graze across a heel counter or an edge dragged along a kerb is instantly visible, and a cream with this much colour in it fills the graze back to the surrounding tone in two careful passes.
• The wax base stops the box crack. Shoes worn twice a year spend their lives dry and folded, which is precisely how leather cracks. Shea butter, carnauba and beeswax travel in alongside the colour, so an infrequent pair keeps some give in it and the vamp crease stays a soft fold.
• Buffs up to an event shine. This range is made to come alive under a brush. On a bright green that matters, because a flat green looks tired in photographs while a green with some light bouncing off it looks chosen, which is the whole reason the shoes exist.
• A jar outlasts the invitations. Occasion shoes get creamed perhaps twice a year. At that rate fifty millilitres is a lifetime supply, and the screw lid keeps the wax from hardening between outings, so the jar is still soft when the next envelope lands on the mat.

How to use the Famaco Green Apple Leather Beauty Cream 373

The method is simple and the mistake is rushing it straight from a cold cupboard. Warm the jar, clean the leather, keep the coats thin and let the wax do its work before brushing.

1. Take the pair out and knock the dust off first.
2. Lift any marks off using a damp cloth, then dry.
3. Warm the closed jar in your hand for ten minutes.
4. Take up a little cream and work it round evenly.
5. Rest the shoes while the waxes soak away.
6. Bring the shine up with a clean soft brush.

My tip as a shoe specialist

Cold cream is the reason bright shades come out patchy. Wax that has sat in an unheated hall cupboard since last summer is stiff, and stiff cream drags across the grain and leaves a heavier deposit wherever your cloth first lands, which on a pale bright green shows as a blotch you then spend an hour chasing. Hold the closed jar in your palm or in a trouser pocket for ten minutes before you open it. Warmed through, it spreads like butter and the coat goes on at one thickness from toe to heel.

Specifications

At a glance

• Jar size: Fifty millilitres, glass
• Colour: Mid apple grass green
• Attribute reads: Green apple 373
• Base: Wax rich pigmented cream
• Suits: Smooth green calf leather
• Never on: Suede, nubuck or textile
• Method: Cloth on, brush off
• Family: Creme de Beaute range
• Maker and cost: Famaco Paris, £6.49

Frequently asked questions

Will it match an emerald or bottle green shoe?

Probably not, and it is worth being straight about that. Emerald and bottle greens carry blue while this one is built on yellow, so on a blue leaning shoe it reads sharp and out of key. A dark pine suits those better.

The green looks dull rather than faded. What is wrong?

Dullness usually means thirsty leather rather than missing pigment. The waxes are what bring the light back, so give the pair a full coat, leave it a moment and brush hard.

How long should I leave it before brushing?

Two or three minutes is plenty on smooth leather. Long enough for the waxes to sink below the surface, short enough that nothing has hardened off.

Where can I buy the Famaco Green Apple Leather Beauty Cream 373 in the UK?

This comes direct from Shoespecialist.co.uk. Spend over £50 and delivery costs you nothing at all, orders in by five on a weekday go out that same afternoon, and the returns window runs for a full sixty days.