 the male dancer
written by               on 29.07. at 19:27:13 - as answer to: whitening ballet shoes by Kyle at>steve,>me and the other guys at our studio have done alot of experimenting w/ this, the results are as follows:>1. wiping w/ white shoe polish works in a jam just DONT use it on the bottom, you will be sliding all over the place. another bad point is that it smells bad after a whileYes, I wondered about that, but I couldn't see it working too well on canvas...>2. hand wash them then let soak in a bleach solution (1 part bleach: 5 parts H2O) for a few hrs. this works great for the dirt stains but doesn't remove the actual dirt plus it greatly shortens the life of you shoesYep, but I get the same old problem with the insoles. Are they supposed to come out, perhaps? (The original glue seemed to be water soluble, but I stuck them back in with impact adhesive.)>3. spray paint believe it or not works quite well, once again dont spray the bottom or it will be like trying to turn in molassas.That's an interesting one.... doesn't it harden the canvas and crack it? The problem seems to be that the 'dirt' contains quite a lot of varnish from the floor, ingrained in the fabric, so even powerful washing liquids don't really seem to do the job. (Guess I could try Decon-90 from here in the lab, but I doubt I'd have any shoes left afterwards!) Dry cleaning would seem to be the best bet, but it would probably cost more than the shoes :-D A. Answers to this message: 
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