I see it as gold and a very pale blue but a friend sees the black and dark blue.

On one of my computers it looks like light brown (matte) and pale blue; on the other it looks more gold (shiny) and white. I asked my DH and he says: "Purple and blue." Purple? Which part? Apparently the light part looks purplish, as in lavender, to him. Okay, maybe I can see that. But if my brown/gold is dark blue to him, then it's a real head shaker, isn't it? I thought it was a joke or a hoax when I first read about it.

Gold and white to me.

what colour? click on red (or is it green?) arrow.

Just checked this out on line. In the original photo I see lightish blue (almost lavender) and 'old gold'.

But when I see both pics. together I see one as black and dark blue and the other as I described. Surely I should see them both as the same colour?

I have just seen a news interview with the company who made the dress and they say it is black and blue and showed the actual dress. They are getting swamped with orders for that one and are now making a gold and white one. .
I think it may be the photos that are showing these colours wrongly. I had copies of my granddaughter's white wedding dress made and they showed a blue train!

vee - this is one of those strange things about colour perception. I thought, like you, that once I'd seen the dress as "it really is" - ie, the picture on the right - I'd be able to see the one on the right in black and blue. But no - to me it is still gold and white (or yes, very light blue).

My daughter sees it as black and blue now, but saw it originally as gold and white!

I love this sort of thing.

Here's a famous one. The squares A and B are the same colour. They really are exactly the same colour.

You want to see something really spooky? The blue and green spirals below are the same colour. Really.

Martin, just got John to look at the dress pics. for a second opinion and it all got rather technical. He felt the dress (black and blue) can't be 'true' black as black is a non-reflective colour and will always appear 'black' whatever light natural/artificial is used to illuminate it.
He also 'saw' the colours as gold and light blue, perhaps less 'muddy' than the ones I see.
re the A and B squares. Are our minds conditioned to see them as alternating dark and light, chess board style, therefore we still do? Is, in fact, B a 'dark' square and A light/white, or could it be the other way round? If the cylinder was changed from green to say yellow would that make a difference?
The spiral thing is way to far above my head; looks like some psychedelic experience.

The spiral is simply an indication that colours you see depend on the colours around them. The "blue" and "green" are exactly the same colour, in terms of the Red/Green/Blue mix that creates them. But the pink and orange stripes next to them fool your eyes into believing that they are different colours.

I don't think the colour of the cylinder matters that much - I think it's the fact that it casts a "shadow" which we then use to adjust what we see. Again, the Red/Green/Blue of the two squares are exactly the same in the A and B.

It's easy enough to prove it - open the picture into a photo editor, and cut out a bit of each of the "contrasting" areas - and drag them together. You'll find they are identical.

I only saw the dress on TV. I could clearly see the blue tones, but the other color looked brownish to me, not gold. How anyone could get white out of it I find amazing.