🗳️ What do you see?
Forget the shop label. Look at the photo and back what your eyes tell you.
📣 Share now to put your side on the record
Every vote here is real, and the count starts at zero. Blue and black or white and gold, your side only wins if your people turn up.
- Tell your mum
- Tell your parents
- Share it to the community
- Get your team to win
- Get your country to win
⚖️ The verdict so far
The dress: blue with black lace. “It's black and blue,” Roman Originals told the BBC the day after it went viral.1 A colour scientist at the University of Leeds said the maker's own picture is “indisputably blue and black” and blamed the “strange” lighting in the photo.1
Your eyes: not so simple. In a 2015 survey of 1,401 people, most saw white and gold or blue and black, and some saw blue and brown. Some people's view even flipped when they were asked again. The researchers think it comes down to the light your brain assumes is shining on the dress.3
⏱️ How it went down
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Early Feb 2015 | Cecilia Bleasdale photographs the dress in a shop at Cheshire Oaks, near Chester, and sends it to her daughter Grace before Grace's wedding.2 |
| The week before the wedding | The bride and groom disagree about the colours. They post it on Facebook, and their friends can't agree either.1 |
| The wedding, Colonsay | The mother of the bride wears the dress. In person it's “obviously blue and black”, says Caitlin McNeill.1 |
| 26 Feb 2015 | McNeill posts the photo on her Tumblr: “guys please help me - is this dress white and gold, or blue and black?”4 |
| 27 Feb 2015 | #TheDress is the top trending tag on Twitter. Kim Kardashian sees white and gold, Kanye West sees blue and black. Roman Originals: “It's black and blue.”1 |
| Mar 2015 | Roman Originals makes a one-off white and gold version. It raises more than £2,700 for Comic Relief.5 |
| Jun 2015 | Current Biology publishes a study of 1,401 people on why we see it differently.3 |
Fair play note: this vote is about what you see in the photo, not what the dress is. Both answers are honest. Argue the colours, not the people.
📚 Sources
- BBC News — Optical illusion: Dress colour debate goes global, 27 Feb 2015
- The Guardian — #Thedress: ‘It's been quite stressful having to deal with it’ (interview with Cecilia Bleasdale), 22 Dec 2015
- Lafer-Sousa, Hermann & Conway — Striking individual differences in color perception uncovered by ‘the dress’ photograph, Current Biology 25(13), 29 Jun 2015
- Caitlin McNeill (swiked) on Tumblr — the original post (Internet Archive copy, 27 Feb 2015)
- BBC News — ‘Twitter dress’ in Comic Relief sale, Mar 2015
Photo: Cecilia Bleasdale, via Caitlin McNeill / Tumblr, 2015. Shown here to identify the photo this vote is about; all rights stay with the owner. No affiliate links on this page.