Mystery Solved! #thedress is Black & Blue, Not White & Gold

On Thursday, the Internet lost its mind over “The Dress.” Tumblr user swiked uploaded a photo of a dress a minidress and posed the question, ”Guys please help me—is this dress white and gold, or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree…” And swiked’s friends aren’t the only ones at odds with each other. The hashtags #thisdress, #blackandblue and #whiteandgold and the phrase “What color is this dress?” were all trending on Twitter.

Hundreds of thousands of social media users, celebrities included, weighed in. Mindy Kaling got especially heated, dragging Julianne Moore and BJ Novak into the conversation:

Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and nearly everyone you follow on Twitter and Instagram injected their personal opinion as to what color the dress is.

On Friday morning, both the user who posted the dress and the model who first wore it, Laura Coleman, confirmed that the dress really is black and blue—not white and gold. On Thursday those on team black/blue pointed out that Adobe’s software identified the color as blue, while those on team white/gold were sure they were being pranked. But Coleman, who wore the dress while shooting with the brand, Roman Originals, posted this to Instagram:

Photo: @lauracoleman/Instagram

So why are some people seeing white and gold? Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College, told Wired, “What’s happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you’re trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis. So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black.”

Sorry Kim, Kanye wins this round.