Yuya Hasegawa's Ardent Shoeshine Dojo" - Removing Mold

This is the "Yuya Hasegawa's Ardent Shoeshine Dojo" series. In the 21st installment, Yuya Hasegawa talks about how to deal with mold, which is the biggest concern this time of year. Yuya Hasegawa passionately discusses how to deal with mold, which is the biggest concern this time of year.

Summer in Japan is a very humid and gloomy season. It is the best season for mold. Japan's "fermentation" food culture is one of the things we can be proud of, but when it comes to shoes, we don't want to grow fungus... In this issue of Shoeshine Dojo, we will teach you how to deal with fungus when it grows.

The picture above is a pair of bit loafers from GUCCI. They are my shoes. I didn't wear them on a rainy day on purpose, but I walked back home on a wet road surface after it rained, and I put them in the shoe rack without drying them completely.

Mold comes in many colors: white mold, yellow mold, and black mold, but be especially careful with black mold because it leaves traces all the way through the leather. When you come home wet, you have to stand your shoes at an angle on a step or something in the entryway to air them out (fan air is best) and dry the soles completely. You probably thought you had done it, but they were still a little wet, and the mold will multiply at once, taking advantage of such an opening.

It has been a long time since I did this! I was surprised and disappointed, but it's okay. Let's deal with it calmly.

First of all, let's get rid of the mold outside. If you do it indoors, the mold will fly around, so first remove as much as possible outdoors. You can use either a horsehair brush or a pig-bristle brush. It is also a good idea to clean the brush you used and let it dry in the sun for about an hour.

After removing the fungus on the surface, wipe the inside of the leather with a cotton ball soaked with plenty of alcohol to kill the fungus. If it is the sole of the shoe, there is no problem even if you apply plenty of alcohol, so wipe it off as if soaking it in. Our "THE ANTIBACTERIA SPRAY" is even better.

Then, as a little trick, dry the shoes in the sun to sterilize them. Direct sunlight is normally not good for leather, but if mold has grown on the leather, you want to disinfect it by exposing it to the sun for about 30 minutes to disinfect it with ultraviolet rays.

Finally, apply sole oil to moisturize the sole. THE LEATHER SOLE OIL" contains vinegar, which has a disinfecting effect, so you can apply it without worry. However, once mold has grown, the roots of the mold fungus remain in the leather, making it easy for the fungus to reappear, so please be careful to keep your shoes dry when storing them. You cannot rest assured that you have removed the mold once, so please be especially careful during the summer months.

So, this time I talked about measures against mold in summer. If mold has grown on the upper part of the shoes, it is not possible to do such radical sterilization, so I would like to talk about this at a different time. So let's get through the too hot summer with beautiful feet!