The Nike Air Monarch Trades Leather for Suede in Two Gum-Soled Holiday Colorways
“Cacao Wow” and “Black” both arrive with the model’s bulky original profile left untouched.
Name: Nike Air Monarch Suede Pack
Colorway: Cacao Wow/Gum Medium Brown, Black/Gum Medium Brown
SKU: IB2281-200, IB2281-001
MSRP: $100 USD
Release Date: Holiday 2026
Nike is giving the Air Monarch a material rework for Holiday 2026, rolling out a two-pair pack that moves the trainer from leather onto suede. The pack pairs a tonal brown “Cacao Wow” build with a “Black” version, and both sit on gum outsoles rather than the model’s more familiar white tooling.
Suede covers the majority of both uppers, which changes how the Monarch reads more than any panel reshuffle would. Where leather gives the shoe its slick, uniform sheen, the nap here absorbs light and softens the overlays, pushing a trainer built for function toward something closer to a seasonal boot finish.
Colour is handled differently across the two. The Cacao Wow pair runs brown from the upper straight through the midsole, so the whole shoe holds one register until the gum tooling arrives underneath. The Black version keeps the upper and midsole dark, which lets the Gum Medium Brown outsole do the work of breaking up the block and reads as the higher-contrast of the two.
What the pack does not do is touch the shape; the Monarch’s bulky, layered profile is carried over as is. This release keeps the proportions the model has always had and lets the fabrication account for the difference.
