Why the Infamous Dress Jenna Bush Hager Wore on TODAY Is So Controversial
This week marks a decade of debate over the viral image of "the dress."
Ten years ago on February 20, 2015 the internet was sent into a heated argument over what TODAY Host Willie Geist called, "One of the great debates of our time.": What color is this dress?
Yes, we're talking about that dress.
In February 2015, the infamous image of a dress with horizontal stripes — some saw it as black and blue, while others were adamant it was white and gold — was shared online and ultimately seen around the world. Millions weighed in after Buzzfeed asked readers what colors they saw.
The Buzzfeed poll had millions of people voting (67% answering white and gold, while 33% said blue and black), with more than 7.6 million tweets discussing the controversial dress. Even celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Ellen DeGeneres, and Taylor Swift weighed in.
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TODAY looks back at a decade of debate over "The Dress"
On February 20, 2025, TODAY celebrated a decade of dress debate, looking back at the viral photo, with TODAY Host Jenna Bush Hager even wearing one of the actual Roman Originals garments which originally sold out in 34 minutes, and is in fact, black and blue in real life. But why did some people see a different set of colors than others?
"It was the perfect storm to create an optical illusion," optometrist Dr. Sarah Klibanoff told TODAY. "If a person saw the dress in a shadow, there's more blue light in a shadow. They immediately think, 'Oh, there's blue light there, I'm going to filter out that blue light, and I'm actually going to see the dress much more white and gold.'"
That might be the scientific explanation, but people are still passionate about which color combo they see.
While Hager was wearing the dress on TODAY, she asked her co-hosts what color it is in the photo, with Savannah Guthrie joining Hager in seeing white and gold, while Carson Daly and Geist saw blue and black — proving that the dress can still spark heated debates a decade later.
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"Can we also just thank Buzzfeed? They went viral for this. This dress was actually in their offices, they loaned it for me," revealed Hager, adding, "I need to go to Prom or something."
The divisive dress still has power years later, but as Hager said in the TODAY segment, "The dress will be seared in our collective memory forever, but maybe that's not a bad thing."
