#TheDress: A Tale of Two Dresses

There’s been a lot of chatter on the Internet and debates among friends and family about the color of #thedress. The now infamous gold and white (or the blue and black) dress is making people question if they are color blind.

Rest assured, Dr. Vincent Giovinazzo, director of ophthalmology at Staten Island University Hospital’s Retina Center, is bringing this debate into focus.

“It’s a form of an optical illusion -- your mind is playing tricks on you,” Dr. Giovinazzo said. “It has more to do with how a person’s brain interprets the image. This is the same type of illusion people see in classic examples like The Young Woman or Old Woman or M.C. Escher’s work.”

Dr. Giovinazzo says the illusion is based on color -- not form.

“You’re seeing an optical illusion because of the juxtaposition of the two different colors in the image, and the way the brain is misperceiving the range,” he said. “It can be based on lighting or the platform you’re viewing the image -- whether you’re looking at it on a smartphone, desktop computer, et cetera.”