Woman goes viral after finding the optical illusion dress at a yard sale

A woman has gone viral on TikTok after finding the infamous optical illusion dress that took the internet by storm in 2015 at a yard sale.

For those who might not remember, the dress was a huge topic of debate nine years ago as people couldn’t decide what colour the garment was, dividing social media into two camps: black and blue or gold and white.

The photo first emerged after Cecilia Bleasdale shared it on a blog ahead of her daughter, Grace’s wedding, with essentially the blueish tint of the photo impacting what people actually saw.

The debate was so fierce that even scientists devised theories as to why people were seeing different colours when presented with the image.

The dress was actually made by the British brand Roman Originals (and was black and blue after all, for anyone still interested) and has gone viral all over again after it was found in a yard sale in Burlington, Vermont.

The item was found by Amanda Rubinstein who shared her discovery on TikTok. In her video, Rubinstein says: “I’m at a yard sale and they have a lot of great stuff, including the dress,” jokingly adding: “I knew it was blue”.

At the time of writing, Rubinstein’s video has received more than 3 million views and lots of very familiar comments.

One person wrote: “What a beautiful white and gold dress!”

Another added: “That is a nice WHITE AND GOLD dress.”

And if the joke wasn’t old enough, a third said: “This is the first time I’ve not seen it as white and gold.”

After being inundated with comments, Rubinstein decided to settle the nearly decade old debate once and for all and showed people that the dress is actually black and blue.

Speaking to Newsweek, she said “The dress was one of the first items I saw when I walked up to the yard sale. I immediately screamed, ‘Oh my goodness, you have THE DRESS!’ The owners and other neighbours had a nice laugh at my expressive reaction upon seeing it.”

It’s hardly the only dress causing some hysteria on TikTok at the moment. A video has gone viral on the platform after a woman explained she had received an email from the human resources department complaining about her attire.

The outfit in question was a plain black bodycon dress with a high neckline, which the woman’s colleague had claimed was “distracting” to other members of staff that day.