Show this photo to your friends and family and ask what colours they see. Their answers may amaze you
THE picture was intended only for the eyes of a bride and groom ahead of their wedding on a tiny Scottish island.
Cecilia Bleasdale simply wanted to know if her daughter Grace Johnston liked the dress she hoped to wear on the big day.
But yesterday, in just 24 hours, the picture became the most viewed – and argued about – photograph in the world.
Megastars Kim Kardashian and husband Kanye West could not see eye-to-eye on the image, singer Taylor Swift said it left her ‘confused and scared’, singer Justin Bieber had his own view and soon First Minister Nicola Sturgeon did, too.
Was the dress blue and black, or white and gold? Arguments raged across the world as those who saw one combination of colours expressed disbelief that others saw it differently.
By last night, the £50 dress Miss Bleasdale wore to her daughter’s wedding on the Hebridean island of Colonsay last Saturday had been seen by tens of millions across the world, prompting a huge surge in sales. People who bought one were in no doubt at all: the dress was blue and black.
It was 21-year- old Caitlin McNeill, from Colonsay, a friend of the bride, who sparked the social media phenomenon by posting the picture of the dress on her Tumblr account at 7pm on Thursday. Before midnight, celebrities had picked up on it.
Miss McNeill, a music student, said: ‘Taylor Swift and Ellen DeGeneres were the first. Then there were others, people like Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber.
‘Then it was just incredible, to the point where people were showing their friends and families the picture.
‘Because it kicked off at night the Americans were in first, I had CBS, NBC, Sky News, Good Morning America, I couldn’t believe it when I had to turn down Good Morning America because I had promised to talk to someone else. I have never seen anything like it, it was scary.’
Miss McNeill said her friend, Grace, first posted the picture on Facebook when she and her husband Keir Johnston could not agree on the colours. ‘I posted it on Tumblr last night and one of my friends put it on Twitter and then I saw online that there had been 22million mentions of the dress and 20million shares. It’s amazing.
‘It [the dress] was really beautiful on the bride’s mother. I wasn’t actually taken with it when I saw it as white in the photograph, but in blue and black it was lovely.’
All day yesterday, the great and the good delivered their verdicts. White and gold said Lord Advo- cate Frank Mulholland, QC – and Nicola Sturgeon concurred.
Enjoying his honeymoon in Jamaica yesterday, newlywed Mr Johnston posted on Facebook: ‘You know it’s gonna be a strange day when you wake up and after 30 seconds of interneting can turn to Grace Johnston and say: ‘So Kim sees white and gold, but Kanye sees blue and black’.’