NEW YORK – Bodhi, a Shiba Inu whose smartly tailored sport coats and luxurious knitwear helped make him the rare canine menswear influencer, has died. He was 15.

To hundreds of thousands of fashion enthusiasts who followed him on social media, Bodhi was known simply as the Menswear Dog. His owner, Ms Yena Kim, announced his death on Instagram on Nov 25, alongside an image of Bodhi wearing an arresting striped turtleneck.

Bodhi was seldom underdressed. For more than a decade, he modelled herringbone overcoats and pageboy caps, buttery cashmere vests and tortoiseshell glasses. In each image, his dignified snout poked out from beneath caramel-coloured fur. It was more typical to see him photographed in a bow tie rather than a dog collar.

“Listen, he wore it well,” said Mr Lawrence Schlossman, co-host of the fashion podcast Throwing Fits. “It was always the right Oxford, the right knit tie, a beautiful raincoat with the collar popped.”

Mr Schlossman became familiar with the Menswear Dog account on Tumblr in the early 2010s, as the preppy look modelled by Bodhi gained traction in mainstream fashion. He once layered a raglan-sleeve coat over a white button-up and realised that he was inadvertently channelling the dapper Shiba Inu.

“I can only imagine that wherever he is, he’s still getting ’fits off,” Mr Schlossman said.

Ms Kim adopted Bodhi from a pet store on the Upper East Side in 2009, when she was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Named after late American actor Patrick Swayze’s character in the 1991 movie Point Break, he sat by her side while she practised draping and pattern-making.

In 2013, Ms Kim and Mr David Fung, her husband at the time, dressed the dog up in some clothing samples from her job as a designer at Ralph Lauren.

“I fully expected him to not be okay with it,” Ms Kim, now 38, said. “But he just kind of sat there and smiled at me.”

They took a photo and posted it on Tumblr. Bodhi’s star was born.

The dog became a darling of the fashion press, pictured in GQ and Harper’s Bazaar. He modelled for Coach and Salvatore Ferragamo and released a capsule collection with Nike.

In 2015, Ms Kim and Mr Fung released a book, Menswear Dog Presents The New Classics: Fresh Looks For The Modern Man. In it, Bodhi wagged his tongue while wearing a Fair Isle sweater.

Some of Bodhi’s attire came from vintage stores...