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 The questionably colored frock became an Internet sensation
after a Tumblr user posted a photograph last week, saying her
friends couldn't agree on its color and asking others to weigh
in.
The question has sparked rants on Twitter by celebrities like
Taylor Swift (blue and black) and Kim Kardashian West (white and
gold) and good old-fashioned breakfast table tirades from
Pleasantville to Peoria.
Even statistics can't settle the debate. A Reuters/IPSOS online
poll found 39 percent see white and 37 percent see blue - a
split not statistically significant enough to end the debate.
The question was asked of 1,906 adults between Feb. 27 to March
2. The results have a credibility interval, a measure of
accuracy, of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.
"Smoggy sky blue," said Patty Craig, 59, a retired courtroom
clerk from Riverside, California, who participated in the poll.
"White," said Julia Nowak, 35, of Minneapolis, a stay-at-home
mom standing her ground in skinny jeans and bedroom slippers.
The scientific explanation for the wildly divergent views of the
dress is color perception tied to both a person's eyes and
brain, said Johns Hopkins ophthalmologist Neil Miller on the
university's website.
Aside from those who clearly see either white and gold or blue
and black, the Reuters/IPSOS poll found, 10 percent see both
white and gold and blue and black and 14 percent see none of
those color combinations.
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Even the most sartorially challenged are engaged in the color wars.
The amount of time that Roger Viens, 70, and his wife have spent
viewing, learning about and discussing the dress is exponentially
longer what he typically dedicates to his own clothing selection
each morning, he said.
"I just grab anything," said Viens, a retired grocer from West
Deptford Township, New Jersey.
He said he sees a blue dress and his wife Jane, 65, a retired
secretary, "went for the other color."
Mitchell Buchanan, 51, whose wife buys his clothes and lays out his
daily outfit, allowing him only to pick the necktie, said when it
comes to the dress, there is detente in his household.
"I see Navy. She sees a lighter shade. But we both see blue," said
the school technology officer from Reynoldsburg, Ohio.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Lisa Lambert)
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