by We’ve become accustomed to seeing frantic arguments erupt online over almost everything, whether it’s serious world events or a culturally provocative act like an American microwaving a cup of tea. However, back in 2015 there was a debate over whether a white and gold or blue and black dress was one of the first to “break the internet”, with global celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian go in back with a twist thrown over our face frivolous colors.
It was at the wedding of Keir and Grace Johnston on the Scottish Isles that mother-of-the-bride Cecilia Bleasdale wore the dress that sparked the debate. Nine years later, the family is in the news for a very different reason.
At the high court in Glasgow on Thursday, Keir Johnston, 38, who works as a petrol station attendant, pleaded guilty to endangering his wife. The court heard that on March 6, 2022, Johnston pinned her to the ground and choked her before brandishing a knife. Grace called 999 and told an operator: “My husband is trying to kill me.”
It’s a far cry from the original dispute about “the dress” – although, considering it was just a discussion about clothes, it reached strangely hysterical levels.
It all started a week before the Johnstons’ wedding, in February 2015. Bleasdale, Grace’s mother, was at the Roman Originals store in Cheshire with her partner Paul Jinks, trying on different dress options. She took three and sent the pictures to her daughter, adding a text saying she had bought the third dress for £50. “The white and gold one?” Grace replied. No, said Bleasdal, “it is blue and black.” Her daughter replied, if she really thought that, “you need to go see a doctor.”
Even more confusingly, Jinks – even though he saw the actual dress in the store – thought it was white and gold in the photo. But Grace’s younger sister Phoebe thought it was blue and black, as did Grace’s fiancé. How could people see so many different colors in one frock?
A frustrated Grace posted the image on Facebook, hoping her friends would support her, but they were equally split. The island community was greatly upset by the debate, but it would not have traveled further had it not been for Caitlin McNeill.
The Scottish singer was good friends with the Johnstons, “and they asked me to put a band together to play at the wedding,” she said. McNeill was told all about the dress and how it had “caused carnage on Facebook”. She said: “[The band] We forgot about it until we saw it at the wedding, and it was clearly blue and black.”
McNeill posted the dress photo on her Tumblr blog on February 26, also hoping for a definitive response. Instead, the argument went global.
BuzzFeed journalist Cates Holderness noted that McNeill’s post received more than 5,000 “notes” (ie comments) in just two hours, “everybody just screaming at each other, losing their minds.” So, Holderness asked her staff what color they thought the dress was. “At the same time, one said ‘blue and black’ and another said ‘white and gold’. Within five minutes there were 20 people standing behind my desk having a rare debate.”
Holderness set up a quick BuzzFeed article with a poll, published it and went home. That night, “the dress” exploded on Twitter, now X. It went from about 5,000 tweets per minute (with competing hashtags, and evenly split, #whiteandgold and #blueandblack) to 11,000 tweets per minute about 1:30 am In total, there were 4.4 million tweets about #thedress in just 24 hours.
When Holderness got off her train in Brooklyn that evening and picked up phone reception, she couldn’t even open Twitter because it was still crashing. “I thought someone died,” she said. “People have been texting me from work, as well as my relatives, because they’re like ‘you’re ruining our lives!’ And I was like, ‘Oh s—, what did I do?'”
Handily, Adam Rogers, the science editor at Wired, studied human perception of color while at MIT, and thought he knew what might be going on. “But I suspected we were in a race — that every science reporter in the country would see this same angle.”
Rogers contacted Wellesley College neuroscientist Bevil Conway, a specialist in color and vision, to adopt. Conway put the phenomenon down to the “surprisingly crappy” picture, which meant it wasn’t clear what the light source was, hence the color. So different people’s brains were “getting rid of the orange or blue component”.
Rogers warned Conway, “tomorrow will not be the same” – and he was right. The Wired article received 32.8 million unique visitors and Conway was inundated with interview requests.
Taylor Swift weighs in
It was at this point that the celebrities got involved. Taylor Swift tweeted: “I don’t understand this weird dress debate and I feel like it’s somehow a trick. I am confused and scared. PS it’s obviously BLUE AND BLACK.” Justin Bieber was by her side.
But Katy Perry, Julianne Moore and Anna Kendrick saw white and gold. Kim Kardashian and her husband at the time Kanye West disagreed: she was the white team, he was the blue team. Lady Gaga called it “periwinkle and sand”, unhelpfully. Alex Jones wore the controversial frock on The One Show.
A spokesperson for Roman Originals, which made the dress, tried to settle the debate by confirming that it was blue and black – and that it came in different colours. “We’re definitely looking into a white and gold version,” they joked.
As for the family that was at the heart of the story, they were suddenly thrust into the public eye.
Bleasdale, McNeill and the Johnstons were flown out to LA to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. They locked the precious dress in a hotel safe.
DeGeneres gave them mock gifts – half blue and black, half white and gold underwear sets – and a very serious one: $10,000 (£7,979) and a deluxe honeymoon in Granada for the newlyweds.
There was some legal wrangling afterwards, as Bleasdale technically owned the copyright to the photo of the dress that started it all, but it was used without her permission. Eventually BuzzFeed agreed to a deal with her to acquire the rights to the photo.
However, Jinks later felt they were “completely out of touch”, and was concerned that many companies had used the dress to make money. He added: “They basically took our property and took advantage of it without even giving us credit, thanks, anything.”
It also caused a rupture within the family. In December of that year, Bleasdale admitted that she and Grace had a “bit of a falling out”. They patched things up, but, she explained, “we don’t talk about it.”
It was certainly an extraordinary viral moment, and perhaps a perfect summation for this new age of opinion as facts – the concept of “my truth” over objective truth, and the outrage that began to characterize all dissent.
‘You came at her again and again’
Fast forward almost ten years, and the dress is the least of the Johnstons’ problems.
This week, the high court in Glasgow heard that Johnston’s attack on his wife, at their home in Colonnade, was the latest in a long period of domestic abuse. The incident began after Grace attended a job interview on the mainland, against her domineering husband, after which he sent her a terrible message saying: “You should support me but you don’t.”
Johnston announced that he was leaving her. When his wife followed him outside their house, he drove her to the ground, then pinned her to his knees and began to chase her. “She believed that Johnston intended to kill her because he was very strong,” Crown prosecutor Chris Macintosh told the judge, Lady Drummond, on Thursday.
Macintosh said Grace felt trapped, as there is no permanent police presence on the island.
Authorities found Johnston crouching under a desk in the couple’s cottage holding a knife to his throat, but the weapon was safely removed.
Lady Drummond remanded Johnston in custody until sentencing next month, refusing bail, as this was a “serious and violent offence”. She said: “You repeatedly choked her, injured her and put her life at risk in what could have been terrifying circumstances for her.”
It is a terrible irony that the Salvation Army in South Africa used it when “the dress” was at its peak in a campaign to raise awareness of domestic violence against women. Their motto: “Why is it so hard to see black and blue?”
Now, once again, fashion and abuse have collided head-on.
