What Happened to Menswear Dog?

Bodhi, the Shiba Inu the internet knew as Menswear Dog, died on November 18, 2024, at the age of 15. His owner, designer Yena Kim, announced it with a final photo of him in a striped turtleneck, which was exactly right: he left the way he lived, better dressed than the rest of us.

The world’s most employable dog

The story began in 2013 as a joke at home in New York. Kim and her partner David Fung put their Shiba in a Ralph Lauren shirt and glasses, photographed the result, and posted it on Tumblr. The joke had a flaw: Bodhi did not look funny in menswear. He looked correct. Shoulders squared, gaze into the middle distance, the whole GQ editorial package on a dog who seemed vaguely bored by his own excellence.

Fashion noticed immediately. Bodhi became an actual working model with actual brand campaigns, magazine features, and the singular title of the world’s most stylish dog. Kim eventually left her design job at Ralph Lauren to run his career, a sentence that sounds insane and was simply true.

Where Boo’s closet meets Bodhi’s

This site documented Boo’s wardrobe for years, so we say this with authority: Boo and Bodhi were the two poles of dog fashion. Boo wore clothes to be adorable; the outfit amplified the dog. Bodhi wore clothes like a professional; the dog elevated the outfit. Between them they proved the entire range of what a dressed dog could be, and every pet-clothing brand operating today owes them both royalties.

His final years

Bodhi worked well into his senior years, dealing with kidney illness and spinal issues in the last two of them, cared for openly and gently as his audience followed along. Fifteen years is a strong run for a Shiba Inu, and his were unusually well documented and unusually well tailored.

He joins his fellow Shiba legends Kabosu and Cheems, and the rest of the internet’s famous dogs, in the archive of dogs the internet refuses to forget. Somewhere, the great walk-in closet in the sky finally has a dog who deserves it.

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