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This sueding technique is not so different from how Mattel 'suedes' plastic hats and such. You can do it to any firm object, including doll and animal bodies!

Materials

The best glue I have found is an artist's acrylic matte medium. This is the white goo that, with color added, forms acrylic paints. It dries clear and semi-matte. Gloss media would give the objects an unnatural shine under the suede, so be sure to get the matte version. You can get it at an artist's supply store.

Aleene's Super-Tacky is a good substitute. Regular white glue is not always water-proof after drying, so I don't recommend it for anything. Also, most glues dry shiny, which you don't want.

The ingredient you may not have seen is rayon flocking from Detail Master. Designed to do carpets and upholstery in model cars, it's usually carried at specialty modeling shops, where you may not have hung around. This 'velour flocking' costs $3.50 for enough to fill a 35mm film can. One tube will do cupfuls of accessories. It comes in 38 colors:
 

This flocking is minuscule shreds of rayon fibre. You can mix colors slightly for tweed effects or thoroughly to get new colors (i.e. white with violet to get lilac). So, of course one winds up buying them all, eventually!

You will also need:

• a metal tea strainer, preferably made with a fine wire screen, not a nylon screen;
• an ordinary spoon;
• a brush to apply the glue;
• a jar or cup for water, to dampen and clean the brush;
• a piece of clean paper;
• and not least important, a dust mask. The sort sold at the drug store made of shaped filter paper with an elastic around the back of your head will do. The rayon is non-toxic, but inhaling it can give you a wicked sore throat from the fibres coating and poking your membranes. So keep children and pets out of the flocking area unless you can mask them, too.

Method

One of the most important preparations is making sure you can hold the object, so that you can coat all areas at once.

A craft stick can be snipped narrower and put in the toe of the shoe, or rubber cement put on the bottom of the shoe to hold it on the flat of the craft stick. A craft stick can be glued inside a hollow purse. Solid purses can be held by a clamp on their clasp. If that doesn't work, do the back later and for now glue it to a craft stick. When you do do the back, you will hold it in your fingers, by the sides. Hats are a pain, but you'll have to find something that wedges inside the crown tightly: maybe a toilet paper roll crunched down and reinforced with rubber cement on its upper edges. Remember, while rubber cement won't harm styrene/hard plastic, make a test of anything else you use it on, like vinyl. It contains a strong solvent and can't be considered a permanent adhesive. It rots and yellows paper over time, while drying out and letting go.  So skip the idea of using it to hold on the flocking.

Then you need to prepare somewhere to put the thing while it dries. I shove the other end of craft sticks into a block of styrofoam. The back end of a clip with a hole in it can be hung up on a towel bar or cupboard handle with a Christmas ornament hook. The TP roll will usually sit upright in a coffee mug. A centaur could be handled by the human part, if that's unflocked. An entirely flocked doll might require you leave one arm clear to do in a separate session, just so you have a handle.

I keep and use the glue on a plate in one room, and apply flock in a different room. That stuff drifts! You don't want it in the glue. You want a room for flocking that is fairly still, as any draft blows it around. This includes your breath, another good reason for the filter mask. Bathrooms are often the best.

Crease your sheet of paper down the middle, the short way, then open it out on your work surface.

Apply a thick, but even coat of glue to all the surfaces you wish to 'suede'.

Let's assume a shoe:

Put on your dust mask.

Put a spoonful of flock in the tea strainer. Flocking is always clumped, no matter how you store it. With the spoon, stir a thick layer of it through the strainer onto the paper. Put the shoe down on the flocking. Stir more flocking on top of it. Turn the shoe back and forth until all glued areas are flocked. For the backs of shoes, this may require holding the stick between the little and ring finger of the off hand with the shoe and your palm pointed down, the tea strainer against the stick higher up between thumb and forefinger, so the flock can fall on the shoe back.

Gently pat the flocking down into the glue with your fingertip. The flocking should be so thick that no glue gets on your finger. Holding the shoe close above the paper, rap on the stick or flick it with your finger, so that excess flocking rains off it. This will get most excess out of hollows like the insides of shoes.

Set it up to dry for a few hours. Not tacky, dry.

When you are through with this color, fold up the paper, tap on the back until the flocking all settles into the groove, and pour it back into the bag.

Afterwards

Any thin areas can be fixed with a whole second coat. If you didn't leave excess loose flocking, none should come off on the brush when you gently swipe on a second coat of glue. Flock as before. Dry thoroughly. A day is good. A week is best, in my experience of acrylics.

When it is fully dry, prepare for final de-flock. Fold a towel to pad the surface, put your catch-paper on it and from a couple of inches up drop the item a couple of times. If any flock was loose, it will fall off. The idea is to get anything loose off now, not on a dressed doll. You can even gently brush it with a soft artist's brush. That's good to make sure it's all out of the toes of the shoes, too.

Flocking will not often come off now, but if you're worried, give it a light spray of matte varnish, like Dulkote. You can rub the flocking off if you try hard, but adult-use customized items shouldn't be treated so roughly.

Enjoy!