Actualités By Maija Kappler 985 Views

Montreal’s Best-Dressed Celeb Is Tika The Iggy

Montreal has a new fashion icon, and she’s a seven-pound dog.

Tika, the Italian greyhound whose video about all the outfits she didn’t get to wear over the course of the pandemic went viral in December, lives in the southwest borough of Ville-Émard with owner Thomas Shapiro and his husband (“favourite dad” and “second-favourite dad,” in Tika’s Instagram captions). She’s been shouted out by celebrities including Jennifer Aniston, Diane Keaton and Lizzo, and her video was re-created by Sofia Vergara. She has an agent and her own merch. And this month she appeared in Vogue, where the legendary fashion magazine showed readers how to recreate human versions of Tika’s now-iconic outfits.

“It’s been a bit crazy,” Shapiro told HuffPost Canada.

Shapiro and his husband got Tika nine years ago, when they were living in an apartment and needed a dog who would be comfortable in a small space. They had both grown up with big dogs, so initially they weren’t thrilled about the idea of a little one. But doing some research on Italian greyhounds quickly changed their minds.

Her name comes from a slight mishearing of the Hindi word ठीक है, or theek hai — something they often heard a friend say on the phone to her mom. “It means like, everything’s good, everything’s okay,” Shapiro said. “We thought it sounded cute. People keep pointing out that sounds like tikka masala, the chicken dish. But it has nothing to do with that.”