Somewhere in 2015 the internet went completely mad over whether a dress was white and gold or black and blue. The picture of this dress which a mother sent to her daughter to help her decide what to wear to her wedding completely broke the Internet. It was being shared on every single social media platforms and was the topic of discussion for several TV shows and entertainment programs. The issue about the dress is a very simple but strange one. People saw the same dress in different colours! A lot of people saw the dress as white and gold while others saw it as blue and black. How could this be?! The debate of the different colours started from the bride and her mother initially. The bride saw a gold and white dress and her mother, blue and black. Like most people they both felt like it was a prank when they showed it to other people and they saw the colours differently. What an excitingly entriguing dress!
Here is a picture of the dress. What do you see? Do you see blue and black or white and gold. For every group of people who look at the dress the white and gold is usually more. Majority of people in the USA saw the dress to be white and gold but the most bizarre thing of all is that the real dress is actually blue and black. So many people including scientists cracked their brains over and over again to understand this phenomenon. The world was basically divided into two. The blue and black side and the white and gold side. The lamest guess anyone can come up with was probably that the dress changes colour but that’s surely impossible.
Debates flooded the Internet about the dress with twitter using the hash tag #thedress. Several YouTube videos were made to explain the different colours that were seen by different people. Some of the explanations were completely absurd but other made perfect sense. Celebrities got caught up in the discussions stating the colour they saw and even forming teams with their colour. The dress got a lot of people disappointed when the true blue and black dress was revealed. Team gold and white felt upset but the colour clearly had to be either one so there it was.
However, this isn’t quite a dress that changes colours, it is just an illusion because of the picture. The picture was taken in badly lit room so light fell on the dress at an angle that caused an optical illusion. Scientists say people saw the colours differently because our brains interpreted the lighting differently. The dress colour was seen based on the way each person perceived it. Even though this explanation makes a good deal of sense it’s still a bit hard to accept. But even after the debate of the dress was over the world was hit with news of an actual colour-changing dress as if we hadn’t had enough!
Showpo a fashion brand announced on their YouTube channel that they had created a dress that can change colours only with the tap of an ipad. This dress is not in anyway connected to cabled or wires anywhere. The dress just changes colour just by tapping a colour on an ipad. They put up the video which went viral in a matter of hours.
In the video you can see a model in a white sleeveless high to low dress and as the ipad is tapped her dress changes colour from white to pink, pink to blue and blue to purple. The model cheers and everyone is excited as the dress changes colour. This excited a lot of people and send tons of traffic to their website with eager women wanting to get their hands on one of the most awesome fashion pieces. Unfortunately the video was not real. The video was crafted in a very convincing manner but there were a few things that gave them away. The first was the fact that they didn’t offer detailed information at all about how the dress worked. The second reason is the fact that when the dress is being changed we only see the model on a white background. Showpo came out to say that the video was just a prank and that the colour changing was done by post production video effects, but if it was true it would have been an excellent dress to own.
In recent time Showpo has faced some fierce competition, Lüme! Lüme has presented a tiny, flexible LEDs right into jackets and dresses and could be the “first” fully controllable electronic clothing that’s ready for the shop rack. We’re not sure whether it’s the first dress to be fully colour changeable because the brand hasn’t quite yet proved anything. They have merely announced the technology and left it at that.
Lüme had taken the colour changing style a step further. According to the brand their upcoming clothing can also change its colours in time with the beat of music in a club! Moreover, you can tweak the app in order to adjust your clothing colour after the weather or a sentiment! Unlike Showpo’s changing dress this one actually has LED bulbs that will with the help of sensors be able to allow the colours to change. This is much more achievable and realistic. We look forward to getting our hands on this fabulous technological outfit for lack of better expression.
Is it too soon to have colour changing dresses without any form of wiring and strings? Surely it’s a bit far in technology right now. Give and take it may take a few more years till we get to that stage and when we do we will then know that fashion has truly evolved. There are currently some advancements like threads that change colour when applied some amount of electricity so it is indeed possible. After all once a camelion can do it why can’t we?