So I (Willow) have this silver pair of Manolo Blahniks. They are easily the most comfortable heel that I own and not coincidentally, one of my favorites. Their style is a little more edgy than I would normally gravitate towards, but I found them secondhand and they just felt too good to pass up.  

They had already had a long and fulfilled life before I brought them home, and I’m thinking that the rubbing on the toe was on of the reasons that they ended up being passed on in the first place. 

My first attempt to fix the toe where the finish was fading from years of wear, was to take them to a local shoe repair shop. This is almost always the best choice to breathe some new life into your favorite pair of shoes, but this time they just didn’t quite look right when I picked them up a week later. The scuffing was still there and it was almost a little worse because of the refinishing process that just served to make the scuffs more noticeable. 

Well, they weren’t looking any better, so I doubled down and decided to give it a try myself this time. I ordered a silver Sharpie paint pen and soon found myself in the middle of the risky adult version of a coloring contest. 

They didn’t look perfect anyways, and the problem was just enough to bother me so that I wasn’t wearing them as much as I would like to, so why not try something? 

After cleaning the heels with a damp cloth, I started in the least obvious place possible so I could see how close of a color match the silver Sharpie was to the original Manolo Blahnik silver finish. Surprisingly, it was close enough for me to continue with my little experiment. 

Then I went on to color in a small area and then take a break to look at the shoe as a whole so I would know when to stop. The key with these type of risky alterations/repairs is to exercise some self control and know where to let it be just good enough. 

I stopped a handful of times to inspect the progress and then decided I had found the point of being happy enough with the repair to actually wear them again without risking taking it too far and making it obvious that I had taken a Sharpie to a $700 pair of pumps.

I’m not going to tell you that all it took was a Sharpie and now they look brand new, because at the end of the day, they are still 10-year-old heels. But, this little repair made just enough difference for me to start wearing these heels again. That is all that I was really looking for and in that regard, this experiment was a resounding success. 

Have you tried something risky like this on your beloved shoes or clothes? 😂 Send us a DM on instagram and tell us the story – I’m dying to know!