The Dress Hot - What Color is the Dress?

The Dress Hot - What Color is the Dress?
The Dress, also known as Dressgate and associated with the hashtags #thedress, #whiteandgold, and #blackandblue, is a photo that became a viral meme on 26 February 2015. The phenomenon revealed differences in human colour perception which have been the subject of serious ongoing scientific investigation in neuroscience and vision science, with a number of papers published in peer-reviewed science journals.

The meme originated from a washed-out photograph of a dress posted on the social networking service Tumblr, and a dispute over whether the dress pictured was blue and black, or white and gold.[8] In the first week after the surfacing of the image alone, more than 10 million tweets mentioned the dress. Although the actual colour of the dress was confirmed to be blue and black,[9][10] the image prompted discussions surrounding the matter across various platforms, with users discussing their opinions on the colour and why they perceived the dress as being a certain colour, while some dismissed the issue as trivial.

At the same time, members of the scientific community began to investigate the photo for fresh insights into human colour vision. A 2015 scientific study of 1,400 respondents found that 57% saw the dress as blue and black; 30% saw it as white and gold; 10% saw it as blue and brown; and 10% could switch between any of the colour combinations. A small number saw it as blue and gold. Women and older people disproportionately saw the dress as white and gold. The scientists further found that if the dress was shown in artificial yellow-coloured lighting almost all respondents saw the dress as blue and black, while they saw it as white and gold if the simulated lighting had a blue bias.