Have you ever had a special connection with a pair of sneakers? You may have a ride or die pair of kicks that have been through it all with you or a pair of shoes you wear whenever you need to boost your confidence. Regardless of your shoe story, your sneakers reflect where you’ve been and what you’ve done, and they are bound to get dirty, which is okay! Shoes are meant to be lived in and enjoyed. Learning how to clean your sneakers is a phenomenal way to maintain your shoe collection and increase their lifespan. We spent the morning at Deadstock Coffee with owner and sneaker enthusiast Ian Williams and Charlie Kirihara, an adidas color and material designer, to break down the shoe cleaning process and teach you how to clean white shoes at home.
The Breakdown: How To Clean adidas Shoes
There are five steps in the shoe cleaning process:
- Getting prepped and gathering the essentials
- Washing the outsole
- Washing the uppers
- Washing the laces
- Letting your shoe and laces air dry
Today we’ll be cleaning the adidas Superstar. This iconic shoe is made of a leather upper and rubber outsole, making it pretty easy to clean. “The leather on most Superstars is tough enough to go through quite a bit of scrubbing and not show any scratches or scuffs,” said Kirihara. “The rubber on the toe and the outsole is great too because it doesn’t matter what you do to it, it won’t get marked up.”