The tragic fate of the family behind the ‘dress that broke the internet’

We’ve become accustomed to seeing frantic arguments erupt online over pretty much everything, whether serious world events or a culturally provocative act like an American microwaving a cup of tea. However, back in 2015, a debate over whether a dress was white and gold or blue and black was one of the first to “break the internet”, with global celebrities like Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian weighing in. Now that seemingly benign story has returned with a twist that casts a dark pall over our frivolous colour feud.

It was at Keir and Grace Johnston’s wedding on the Scottish island of Colonsay that mother-of-the-bride Cecilia Bleasdale wore the debate-inspiring garment. Nine years on, 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’s life. The court heard that on March 6, 2022, Johnston pinned her to the ground and choked her before brandishing a knife. Grace dialled emergency services and told an operator: “My husband is trying to kill me.”

The dress that broke the internet - was it white and gold or black and blue?

It’s a far cry from the original dispute over “the dress” – although, considering that was just a discussion about clothing, it did reach oddly hysterical levels.

It all began a week before the Johnstons’ nuptials, in February 2015. Bleasdale, Grace’s mum, was at the shop Roman Originals in Cheshire with her partner Paul Jinks, trying out different dress options. She photographed three and sent the pictures to her daughter, adding a text saying that she’d bought the third dress for £50 ($103). “The white and gold one?” Grace replied. “No,” said a bemused Bleasdale, “it’s blue and black.” Her daughter replied that if she really thought that, “you need to go and see a doctor”.

Even more confusingly, Jinks – though he’d seen the actual dress in the shop – also perceived it as white and gold in the photograph. But Grace’s younger sister Phoebe thought it was blue and black, as did Grace’s fiance. How could people see such different colours in one frock?

A baffled Grace posted the image on Facebook, hoping that her friends would back her, however they were similarly split. The debate consumed their island community, but it wouldn’t have travelled any further if it wasn’t for Caitlin McNeill.

The Scottish singer was good friends with the Johnstons, “and they asked me to put together a band to come and play at the wedding,” she recalled. McNeill had been told all about the dress and how it had “caused carnage on Facebook”. She added: “[The band] forgot about it until we saw it at the wedding, and it was obviously blue and black.”

McNeill posted the dress photograph to her Tumblr blog on February 26, likewise hoping for a definitive answer. Instead, the argument went global.

The BuzzFeed journalist Cates Holderness noticed that McNeill’s post had received more than 5000 “notes” (i.e. comments) in just two hours, “all people just screaming at each other, losing their minds”. So, Holderness asked her team what colour 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 just raucously debating.”

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 around 5000 tweets per minute (with competing, and evenly divided, hashtags #whiteandgold and #blueandblack) to 11,000 tweets per minute by 1.30am. Overall, 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 kept crashing. “I thought somebody had died,” she recalled. “People were texting me from work, as well as my relatives, being like ‘you’re ruining our lives!’ And I was like, ‘Oh s---, what did I do?’”

Handily, Adam Rogers, the science editor at Wired, had studied the human perception of colour while at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 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 the Wellesley College neuroscientist Bevil Conway, a specialist in colour and vision, for his take. Conway put the phenomenon down to the “surprisingly crappy” picture, which meant it wasn’t clear what the light source was, and thus the colour. So, different people’s brains were “either getting rid of the orange or bluey component”.

Rogers warned Conway, “your tomorrow will not be the same” – and he was right. The Wired article went on to receive 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 odd dress debate and I feel like it’s a trick somehow. I’m confused and scared. P.S. it’s OBVIOUSLY BLUE AND BLACK.” Justin Bieber sided with her.

But Katy Perry, Julianne Moore and Anna Kendrick all saw white and gold. Kim Kardashian and her then husband Kanye West disagreed: she was team white, he was team blue. Lady Gaga, unhelpfully, called it “periwinkle and sand”. Alex Jones wore the disputed frock on The One Show.

A spokesman for Roman Originals, who made the dress, tried to settle the discussion by confirming it was blue and black – and that it came in different colours. “We’re definitely looking into a white and gold version,” they cheekily added.

As for the family at the heart of the story, they were suddenly thrust into the limelight.

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 joke gifts – sets of half blue and black and half white and gold underwear – and a very serious one: US$10,000 ($16,609) and a deluxe honeymoon in Granada for the newlyweds.

The Johnstons were even flown out to LA to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

There followed some legal wrangling, since Bleasdale technically owned the copyright for the photograph of the dress that started it all, but it had been used without her permission. Eventually BuzzFeed agreed a deal with her to acquire the rights to the photo.

However, Jinks subsequently felt they had been “completely left out from the story”, and was annoyed that numerous companies had used the dress to make money. He added: “Basically they’ve taken our property and profited off it without even giving us a credit, a thank you, nothing.”

It also caused a rupture within the family. In December of that year, Bleasdale admitted that she and Grace had had “a bit of a falling-out”. They patched things up, but, she explained, “we just don’t talk about it”.

It was certainly an extraordinary viral moment, and perhaps a perfect summation for this new age of opinion as fact – the concept of “my truth” over objective truth, and the fury that began to characterise every disagreement.

‘You repeatedly strangled her’

Fast-forward almost a decade, and the dress is the least of the Johnstons’ problems.

This week, the Glasgow High Court heard that Johnston’s attack on his wife, at their Colonsay home in the Inner Hebrides, was the latest in a long period of domestic abuse. The incident began after Grace had attended a job interview on the mainland, in defiance of her domineering spouse, and he subsequently sent her an ominous message saying: “You should support me but you do not.”

Johnston announced he was leaving her. When his wife followed him outside their cottage, he hurled her to the ground, pinned her there with his knees and began strangling her. “She believed Johnston intended to kill her as he was very forceful,” crown prosecutor Chris Macintosh told the judge, Lady Drummond, on Thursday.

Macintosh said that Grace had felt trapped, since there is no permanent police presence on the island.

Johnston was found by authorities crouching under a desk in the couple’s cottage holding a knife to his throat, but the weapon was safely removed from him.

Lady Drummond remanded Johnston in custody pending sentencing next month, denying bail, since this is “a serious and violent offence”. She said: “You repeatedly strangled her, injured her and put her life in danger in what must have been absolutely terrifying circumstances for her.”

It’s a horrible irony that when “the dress” was at its peak, the Salvation Army in South Africa used it in a campaign to raise awareness of domestic violence against women. Their slogan: “Why is it so hard to see black and blue?”

Now, once again, fashion and abuse have grimly collided.