Single Monk - rare, slightly more serious buckle shoe with historical significance

Example variant

Single Monks with a wide buckle and contrast stitching

This here is a playful pair of Single Monks with a relatively thick buckle, a wide leather strap, and lots of contrast stitching. The welt is also decorated with particularly deep grooves and, together with the contrast stitching, creates a nice pattern. At the same time, the smooth upper leather radiates a warm color without having a distracting texture. This makes the previously mentioned craftsmanship details and decorations stand out especially well. In my view, this is a very nice pair of casual leisure shoes that I would most like to combine with chinos.

Special features

A Single Monk with a not-too-wide leather strap is, in the eyes of many people, still the most serious of the so-called monk-strap shoes—monk-strap shoes with two or even three buckles per shoe are already significantly more playful and exotic and therefore best suited for casual wear.

A black Single Monk made of unembossed smooth leather can, however, work well for somewhat more formal occasions. But it is not a completely safe option, because in some circles shoes fitted with metal hardware are frowned upon. Therefore, for truly formal occasions you should switch to black Oxfords rather than black Single Monks.

Overall, the Single Monk is a very flexible shoe that you can wear in different situations depending on the upper leather and the thickness of the strap and buckle. Its formal version is embodied by a Single Monk made of black, unembossed smooth leather—with a not-too-thick buckle and a not-too-wide strap. And a strongly casual version of a Single Monk would be one with brown, embossed smooth leather, a thick buckle, and a wide leather strap. Starting from these two extreme variants, you can vary the Single Monk almost arbitrarily across the spectrum in between:

• Black Single Monks in embossed smooth leather reasonably good for casual wear and quite good for the office
• Single Monks in black suede quite good for casual wear
• Dark brown Single Monks in partly embossed and partly unembossed smooth leather - versatile
• Light brown Single Monks made of unembossed smooth leather and with various decorations - a nice casual shoe

You can take a look at many of these variants further down.

Variants

Black Single Monks made of undecorated smooth leather

I see this pair of black Single Monks as best suited for the office and for semi-formal evening events. For everyday life and casual wear they look a bit too serious, especially at the very front. However, for truly formal occasions they are simply suboptimal as buckle shoes with metal clasps; for such occasions you are better off choosing black Oxfords in black smooth leather or patent leather. The small detail of the somewhat too-thick sole also fits that—purely formal shoes tend to have a slightly thinner sole.

Nevertheless, this is a nice shoe for special occasions that is simply refreshingly different from most shoes one encounters nowadays. With gray or dark red chinos, I personally would also wear the shoes casually, even though there are of course more relaxed alternatives that look less strict. Especially when the trousers, while standing, cover the buckle, the shoes look as if they could be the most formal Oxfords.

Black Single Monks made of suede

Shoes made of black suede are quite rare; coming as a Single Monk, even rarer. With this pair here, the focus is primarily on casual shoes, which is already hinted at by the thickness of the buckle and the width of the leather strap. The welt, with its deep grooves, is also designed in a very casual and not very understated way. With gray or dark red jeans or corduroy trousers, such a shoe will certainly work quite well. And this combination of exotic material and exotic model makes the shoe, in my view, something very special. It should open up many good pairing options with other garments; corduroy trousers, in particular, somehow appeal to me the most with it.

Brown Single Monks with a golden-yellow buckle

Here is a pair of brown single monks in embossed smooth leather with a golden-yellow buckle. You can wear this pair quite well in your free time and also in everyday life in general. They go quite well, for example, with jeans that aren’t too dark. Apart from the golden-yellow buckle, there are no notable decorative processing details here that catch the eye. So, in my view, the shoe’s focus lies on the embossed upper leather, which has a nice embossing that isn’t too deep. And this relatively subtle embossing still underlines the casual character of the shoes. - A simple principle and still nicely done.

In a certain sense, this shoe is, for me, a counterpoint to shoes in the boho style: Those kinds of shoes work a lot with decorations such as decorative stitching, contrast stitching, striking laces, and more. This pair of single monks here, by contrast, is kept simple and largely lets the upper leather speak for itself. - Two kinds of casual shoes and two completely different approaches. If you’d like to compare this pair of single monks here with shoes in the boho style yourself, you can do so here:

Dark-brown single monks in the style of a double monk

Here is a pair of worn single monks that could use some care, but that show a special variant of a single monk: This variant has only a relatively small leather strap for fastening, which is attached to a large leather panel. The leather panel is stitched to the rest of the shoe at the bottom and on the inner side, and on the outer side of the shoe there is the buckle, which by itself cannot create that much stability. So, in terms of fit, the shoe is somewhat risky if you were to order such a shoe without trying it on. At least, however, there is a short elastic band on the upper leather on the inner side of the shoe, which adds a bit more flexibility in case of a potentially high instep.

In better condition, this is a very nice model: The dark-brown color can be combined with a great many items. In addition, the shoe is made of embossed leather in the upper area and unembossed smooth leather in the lower area. For me, that’s a nice variation.

In my view, this variant with the large leather panel right on top of the shoe is very closely modeled on a typical double monk. It’s almost only the number of buckles that distinguishes the two variants from each other. If you’d like to compare this single-monk variant here with so-called double monks, you can do so here: