Thursday night, “The Dress” basically destroyed the internet. But how did the whole thing start?
The original pic of the dress (which is blue and black) was taken by Cecilia Bleasdale, who bought it to wear at the wedding of her daughter Grace. A friend of Grace, Caitlin McNeill, noticed that her friends were, for some reason seeing the dress in different colors (#goldandwhite #blueandblack) and posted the picture to Tumblr. The image quickly went viral.
McNeill told The Daily Mail she had no idea her post would take off the way it did:
‘What happened was two of my close friends were actually getting married and the mother of the bride took a photo of the dress to send to her daughter,’ she said.
‘When my friend showed the dress to her fiancee, they disagreed on the colour. All of our friends disagreed.’
That is when McNeill shared the photo on a Tumblr fan page dedicated to a talent manager Sarah Weichel. Then, without Weichel even knowing, or promoting the post, it went explosively viral.
As for why people see the dress in 2 different sets of colors, Wired goes into great detail about the phenomenon which is best explained by this:
Today has been a torturous day. I want to understand this more than the meaning of life. #DressGate2015 #TheDress pic.twitter.com/59MHAVHjgL
— Leesa Little (@Leesa_Little) February 27, 2015
