Before the wedding of Grace and Keir Johnston, the bride's mother, Cecilia Bleasdale, took a photograph of a dress she was planning to wear to the ceremony in which she sent it to her daughter.
After some disagreements, the bride posted the photo to Facebook to ask her friends' opinion, in which many were confused.
Then on the day of the wedding. Ceitlin McNeill, a friend of the couple, was also confused after seeing the dress in person. She was a member of the Scottish folk music group Canach, which performed at the wedding on Colonsay. The group was also confused. They even said that they almost failed to make it on stage because they were so busy discussing the dress.
On February 26th, 2015, McNeill posted the picture to Tumblr. And again the image posed questions. But this time, at a much bigger scale: on the internet.
The photograph was later known, and also popular with the nickname The Dress.
The original dress photo in question is a washed-out color photograph of a layered lace dress and jacket.
The distress spread quickly when it was posted on social media, generating many opposing viewers, putting the internet into two firm groups: the first is the people that said the dress has the color white and gold, and the second group said blue and black.
In the first week after being uploaded, the post gathered 10 million tweets mentioning the dress, using hashtags such as #thedress, #whiteandgold, #blackandblue, #blueandblack and #dressgate.
Celebrities also entered the debate, expressing their opinion.
From Taylor Swift, Jaden Smith, Frankie Muniz, Demi Lovato, Kanye West, Mindy Kaling, and Justin Bieber all agreed the dress was blue and black, Anna Kendrick, B. J. Novak, Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian, Julianne Moore, and Sarah Hyland saw it as white and gold. Lucy Hale, Phoebe Tonkin, and Katie Nolan said that the dress had different color schemes at different times. For example, Lady Gaga said the dress as "periwinkle and sand," while David Duchovny called it teal.
Other celebrities, politicians, government agencies and social media platforms of well-known brands also weighed on the trend.
Businesses that had nothing to do with the dress, or even the clothing industry, had even devoted their time and attention to the phenomenon. From Adobe to Pizza Hut and others, also jumped into the conversation with their own marketing messages.
From QVC to Warner Bros. to local public libraries and even Red Cross, have all entered the discussion.
According to Tom Christ, Tumblr's director of data, at its peak, the image was receiving about 14,000 views a second. Ultimately, the dress received a staggering 4.4 million tweets within its first 24 hours.
The dress was later identified as a product of Roman Originals, called "Lace Bodycon Dress". It has three other color variations (red, pink, and ivory, each with black lace). The retailer experienced a huge surge in sales after the The Dress incident.
Ian Johnson, creative manager for the retailer, learned of the controversy from his Facebook news feed the next morning.
"I was pretty gobsmacked. I just laughed and told the wife that I'd better get to work," he said.
"We sold out of the dress in the first 30 minutes of our business day and after restocking it, it's phenomenal!"
On 28 February, Roman Originals announced that they would make a single white and gold dress for a Comic Relief charity auction.
While the question has been answered, the image continued to form discussions, with people asking others why they perceived the dress as a certain color.
This viral internet sensation has a phenomenon which put human color perception into a test. This same phenomenon has been a subject of ongoing scientific investigation in the fields of neuroscience and vision science, with a number of paper published in journals.
And as for Bleasdale and her partner Paul Jinks, they later expressed frustration and regret over being "completely left out from the story." The phenomenon was so focused on The Dress that they were left completely out of the picture. Many omitted their role in the discovery, and used the photograph for commercial uses.
When the photo of the dress was posted online by wedding guest Caitlin McNeill, it quickly went viral and was said to have "broken the internet." Celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift weighed in on the debate.
Johnston and his wife even appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where they were gifted $10,000 and a trip to Grenada after they revealed that the dress was, in fact, black and blue.
The dress even appeared in an ad campaign raising awareness about domestic violence, asking: "Why is it so hard to see black and blue."
The Dress was one of the most popular internet phenomenon in 2015, which was included multiple times as the fastest growing meme of all time.
From this day on, the world will be divided into two people. Blue & black, or white & gold. http://t.co/xJeR7GldwP pic.twitter.com/i6BwVzPzSZ
— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) February 27, 2015
In 2023, Keir Johnston, the man behind the dress that "broke the internet" has been charged with trying to kill his wife.
Allegedly, the man from the Isle of Colonsay in Scotland is said to have conducted an almost 11-year campaign of domestic violence.
He appeared at the High Court in Glasgow, and has been charged and faces allegations that he repeatedly assaulted his wife between April 2019 and March 2022.
Among the things he did, included shouting at her, strangling her, and brandishing a knife.
In one instance, Johnston is accused of placing his wife in a headlock, to then dragged her from a pub after she refused to leave with him.
In another incident, it is alleged he attempted to get into a vehicle she was in, to then struck her through an open window.
Further allegations accuse him of isolating his wife from her friends and monitoring her movements and finances.
Johnston carried out a series of violent attacks against his wife, which culminated in attempted murder, prosecutors allege.
Johnston denies all charges against him, and the case shall have a further preliminary hearing ahead of a trial in 2024.