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drøn
dancing james
pdlouche
Pretty sure we discussed this with someone a year or so ago. You can’t un-dye leather.
Dyes used to tan leather are permanent or else they would just drip off in the rain or with sweaty feet. You must use a solvent if you want to try to lighten a shoe, because you’re trying to strip as much colour as possible.
Acetone, or Isopropyl alcohol, you can strip off the whole finish, then re-apply creams and oils into the leather, and polish again, but in reality this only works for a single shade. You can go dark brown to brown, but it may not be consistent.
Generally where you see fashion shoes with the sunburst or burnished toes, they started light and darker was applied.
If you apply light polish to a dark shoe, it’ll just look messy, or it won’t look any different. I once tried using white polish on a very pale cream-grey shoe as the difference in tone was small... it just looked awful and I had to clean all the polish off and start again.