Care Guide for the Derby Boots

Now, we didn’t cut corners on the Derby Boots when it comes to durability, but old sayings stick around for a reason. So with that in mind here are a few care tips that’ll help keep your boots clocking up the miles for years to come.

Lovely as they are, we don’t recommend wearing these boots (or any) for days on end.

• Leather’s a natural material and, like most of us, it can do with a breather from time to time. Alternating wearing your boots with other shoes so that they can take a mo, relax, and let some of that daily-wear moisture escape…
• Use shoe-trees, preferably wooden ones, when you’re not wearing them. That will help them recover from being worn, optimise airflow and keep them in shape.

This is the hard part, and we recommend knuckling down to it every two months or so.

For the smooth or grain leather versions:

• Use a cloth and a leather cleaning cream to remove anything dirt that may have settled on your boots during your adventures.
• Using a small brush, apply some nourishing cream to restore the leather’s original shine. There's no need to apply a ton of this stuff, a little goes a long way.
• Apply some polish from time to time. First of all, choose a good one, because most contain silicone and leave a transparent deposit that doesn't look great. We recommend Saphir's, it’s top of the range. Nice and easy does it to here, and remember to use a good soft cloth.
• Let them rest a moment while you sip a little tea or coffee before giving them a final once-over with a horsehair brush.

For the waxed leather versions

Thanks to the waxy treatment, there's no need to clean, cream and brush these every other day. A little extra wax, say three or four times a year, should do the job just fine.

That said, you’ll need to put in a little elbow grease with regular brushing. The more effort you put in the more you’ll heat up the oils, meaning they’ll better mask those everyday scuffs and marks that stack up.

This kind of leather ages gracefully, developing a nice patina. Enjoy!

A word to the wise: if you went for a pair of brown waxed leather boots, we’d advise against wearing them with light-coloured trousers or socks the first few days. This type of leather tends to bleed at first when in contact with natural textiles. The grease’ll settle down after the first few days of wear.

After you’ve cleaned your boots, you can apply a waterproofing treatment to give them a foot-up against the elements. Hold them 30cm from the spray and give them a couple of blasts all over, that should keep them looking the part for a long while.

You can do this with all the versions of our Derby Boots, but we’d particularly recommend it if you plumped for the suede finish. But even with a waterproofing treatment, we’d suggest you avoid standing in streams for too long, leather — suede or otherwise, isn’t the most amphibious material known to man.

Naughty list

• Don’t ever wash your Derby Boots by putting them under running water and, hopefully, needless to say, don’t even think about machine washing them!
• Don’t apply bleaches, solvents or any similarly aggressive cleaning products to your boots.

Let the pros step in

Take them to your local shoemaker or cobbler if:

• You've got better things to do than polish your shoes
• You finally need to resole them, having clocked up serious mileage.

Now you know everything there is to know about caring for your Derby Boots. We hope that you'll be pleased with them. We'll be back in touch in a few weeks’ time to see how it’s going.

Have any feedback on your new boots, whether positive or negative, don’t hesitate to contact our team at support@asphalte.com or send us a message on our International Instagram page.

Thanks again for placing your trust in us and we hope to hear from you soon.

The ASPHALTE team