The world’s most renowned optical illusion celebrates its 10th anniversary.
The year is 2015. It’s February, and Buzzfeed, the king of listicles, publishes a seemingly innocuous story titled “What colors are this dress?” Little did anyone know, the world was about to change forever. And let me just say, to this day, I still can’t see the dress as anything other than white and gold.
What started as a simple, candid photo of a dress unraveled into a global phenomenon, exposing the fascinating ways people perceive colors differently. While the dress was, in fact, black and blue, millions of people saw it as white and gold—or even other variations. The debate exploded across social media, sparking endless tweets, heated arguments, and countless news stories. Nothing quite like it has gone viral since.
Now, as “the dress” officially turns ten, it stands not only as one of the greatest optical illusions of all time but also as a nostalgic reminder of a simpler, more lighthearted era of the internet.
The original photo of *”the dress”* that ignited the global debate (Image credit: Swiked via Tumblr) remains one of the most iconic images of the internet age.
As Roman Originals, the company behind the dress, explains on a dedicated page of their website: *”The Dress became a viral sensation on 26th February 2015, when the world was divided over whether the garment was black and blue or white and gold. This phenomenon uncovered fascinating differences in human colour perception, sparking ongoing scientific research in neuroscience and vision science. Multiple studies have since been published in peer-reviewed journals, while the debate itself became popularly known as ‘dressgate.'”*
The dress even has its own Wikipedia page (because of course it does), which notes that numerous scientific explanations were proposed, though no definitive consensus was ever reached. Neuroscientist Bevil Conway offered one compelling theory, telling *Wired* that the disagreement might stem from how the brain processes colour in different lighting conditions. *”Our visual system is designed to discard information about the light source and focus on the actual reflectance of objects,”* he explained. *”But in my 30 years of studying individual differences in colour vision, this is one of the most dramatic examples I’ve ever seen.”*
Adding another layer to the mystery, a study published in the *Journal of Vision* suggested that people’s sleep patterns might influence their perception. Early risers, the study claimed, were more likely to see the dress as white and gold, interpreting it as being lit by natural light, while night owls tended to see it as blue and black.
Whether you saw white and gold or blue and black, *”the dress”* remains a fascinating case study in perception, science, and the unpredictable nature of viral internet phenomena.
