Keeping Your Sneakers Proper

Having a proper sneaker collection is kind of like owning a nice car. You can customize and swap different components out to make it fully yours. For your car it might be different rims or a custom sound system. For you sneakers it might be different premium shoelaces from Lace Lab, or a completely new color scheme on a pair of classics like these Stan Smiths.

(Source: @gemcustoms)

But above all, you have to put in the time to keep everything fresh. Although, unlike a car (unless you’re balling), you can keep adding sneakers to your collection. Getting new sneakers shouldn’t be a reason to let an older pair go to waste. It’s hard to justify the amount of time put into keeping your sneakers clean, swapping out your laces, or customizing the colorway if your shoes are bent out of shape. That’s where shoe trees come into the picture. Luckily, our extended family over at Angelus Direct has their very own shoe trees (size 6-13) to keep your sneakers in their proper shape.

Our boy Davidgotkicks agrees. Check out his review over on his channel.

(Source: @davidgotkicks)

Depending on where you shop to keep your feet correct, you might have seen shoe trees being used before. A more run-of-the-mill spot is going to stuff balled up paper into sneakers, but a reputable sneaker boutique will probably use shoe trees for the floor models. There’s a reason for this—all that handling and touching is going to wear down the integrity of the sneaker over time, or at least for the season. People wouldn’t buy a sneaker if the floor model was messed up.

Eventually, footwear is going to get creases around toe and slowly lose shape over time. If this can happen when a shoe is just behind manhandled on display, imagine what your actual feet do to your sneakers.

Even when you wear socks, your feet will sweat when they’re covered by a pair of shoes. The longer you wear a pair, the more sweat and moisture is absorbed into the lining. That moisture eventually breaks down the interior and that’s how creases around the toebox start. But not to worry, if you are using a shoe tree, your sneakers will dry out in the original shape. So to combat the aging process on a pair of sneakers, you would want to use a shoe tree to preserve the original shape for as long as possible.

According to some of the “authorities” on shoe tree usage (there is such a thing), the ideal care routine for your footwear would involve letting your sneakers dry out for a day before using them again. If this sounds like you, then a shoe tree is right up your alley. For those ultra rare joints stored you have stored for their once-a-month appearance, you probably want to keep them laced up with a pair of shoe trees.