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I started this research topic by attending the WGSN: The Global Authority on Trend Forecasting talk, that was hosted on Monday 7th February 2022.

I learned that WGSN is the global authority on change, using expert trend forecasting combined with data science to help you get ahead of the right trends. They do this through consumer insight, product design direction and trading strategies so that you can then create sustainably and land the right trends at the right time to maximise sales.

Furthermore, through my extensive research, I have also come to the conclusion that that we, as a society, have never been in a position where everything is changing so much and so fast, and where the blending of consumer expectations, technologies and business models across and between industries is so great. Which is why trend forecasting so very important and beneficial right now.

In addition, I believe that accurate analysis of consumer trends is now vital in forming brand direction and development, in the creation of relevant products and services and ultimately in ensuring brand success.

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Trend Forecasting | Trend Bible | Future Consumer Insights

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TrendBible is a leading trend forecasting agency. Our team of trend analysis experts work in home interiors, baby & kids and gifting.

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Consumer Insight

Know your consumers and stay ahead of lifestyle shifts with unrivalled insight into the way they'll think, feel and behave for years to come.

Through detailed and accurate consumer forecasts and expert consultancy services, we show how consumer behaviours, interests and tastes will shape how they live, work and play. This enables you to anticipate big lifestyle shifts and develop products and services that meet consumer needs.

Explore Consumer Insight

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WGSN | Trend Forecasting & Analytics 2024-2032

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WGSN is the global authority on change, using expert trend forecasting combined with data science to help you get ahead of the right trends.

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Trends signal the emerging needs of the consumer, and as a designer, you can capitalize on their potential for turning a profit. By understanding consumer shifts and product trend predictions, businesses can both avoid bad product choices and capture market opportunities.

Trend forecasting can help validate a design idea or direction you have for your brand, helping you know which trends to act on and when. Using trend insights effectively can strengthen your brand’s DNA, providing you have a clear knowledge of your customer, your brand’s USP, your limitations, by adding a layer of trend insights you can harness the power of trend forecasting to help your business grow.

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Professional trend forecasters use various different methodologies and techniques including qualitative research and interviews in order to formulate forecasts for product and services.

They will be keeping an eye out for these types of information:
- Differences in consumer interests, values, and motivation.
- Changes in the economic picture
- Breakthroughs in technology and science
- Shifts in demographics that can restructure society.
- Alternation in political, cultural, and economical alliances between countries.
- Changes in industry and market structures

From all the research that is gathered through the methodologies above, a trend hypothesis is created which is then articulated into drivers, consequences and impact.

The research is then distilled into scenarios and trend themes that include information on overall aesthetics, colour direction, fabrics and textures, print and pattern.

From all of this, an experienced and trained trend forecaster will be able to help you navigate complexity, and provide an evidence-based view of the future.

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Once a trend is identified, a range of tools can be used to hypothesise the impact (level of adoption) and length of a trend. A ‘product diffusion curve’ or ‘innovation curve’ is a visualisation of the spread of innovation through a social system.

This was first created in the ’60s by Everett M Rogers.

The diffusion of innovation curve, has a vertical axis for numbers of adopters and a horizontal time axis. The tool can be used to indicate how customers go through the process of adopting a proposed innovation.

By using this technique, trend forecasters track how an innovation/new trend is being adopted by consumers, and at what pace in order to forecast consumer interest.

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Trends are a response to a consumer need, or to a cultural change which pushes them towards a new, more acceptable product. There are methodologies to identify emerging trends and techniques in predicting their scale and longevity.

It can be very hard to pinpoint and identify what has ‘sparked’ or 'triggered' a consumer trend and it is is often a good starting point to figuring out how trend forecasts are created. For example, there are common ways a trend occurs such a new technology or fabric innovation being introduced, a ‘Pendulum swing’ or a ‘Fashion cycle’.

The pendulum swing refers to the movement of fashion between extremes, for example, fluctuations between long and short hemlines, fitted or oversized silhouettes. A historic example would be Dior's 'New Look', characterized by full skirts and volumes of fabric, it was a dramatic shift away from restrictive wartime garments. A more recent pendulum swing example is the move away from the dominating Activewear or the 2010s, toward a much more feminine and romantic aesthetic.

Furthermore, fashion and interior trends can also be cyclical. As ‘fashion looks’ or interior styles move further into the past, the perception of it changes, it somehow looks ‘fresh’ again. This was first introduced by James Laver in the 1930s, cyclical fashion theory explains that when an aesthetic or style is neglected for some time it is 'ripe' for revival.

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Short term forecasting and close-to-season reports, provide a much more prescriptive sense of what consumers will be wanting in the next 6 – 12 months. These seasonal forecasts typically provide information on colour, fabric, print and pattern, styling, key items, and overall aesthetics.

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Long term forecasting look at broader directional pointers that indicate the way society is changing. A macro trend forecast provides a picture of consumer lifestyles, and offers predictions that affect across categories.

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- Long term forecasting, also known as Macro trend
- Short term forecasting
- Seasonal forecasts

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The main thing that trend forecasters do, is research and identify social, cultural, ethical or environmental shifts, and how they are likely to affect future consumer behaviour.

Through this process, trend forecasters can then identify products and services that consumers will be looking to buy.

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What even is trend forecasting? Trend forecasting is essentially the process of researching and formulating predictions on consumers future buying habits.

Trend forecasters are able to provide designers and brands with a ‘vision’ of the future by identifying the source, tracing the evolution and recognising patterns of trends.

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WGSN: The Global Authority on Trend Forecasting

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WGSN: The Global Authority on Trend Forecasting

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User Research: Best Practices and Methodologies | Adobe XD Ideas

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User research focuses on understanding user behaviors & needs through various techniques. Read about different methods of user research at Adobe XD Ideas.

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I started my research journey for this topic, by attending the Research in Practice: Insights from Industry with Deloitte Digital talk, that was hosted by Danny and Ange. They are User Researchers within the Experience Design studio at Deloitte Digital.

By attending the talk, I came to the conclusion that User research is still relatively new and has only very recently come around. That being said, there have been various different studies that have taken part in creating it. For example, studies into psychology, ergonomics, anthropology, marketing and user interface have all taken place, to then formulate user research. All these topics have various different assets that have helped formulate user research, and extract the 'right' type of information from consumers; which in turn is very beneficial to companies.

As a Digital Marketing student, I can first hand understand just how important it is to get the right type of information from consumers, as this can tremendously help with understanding what the best type of marketing strategy would be for specific brands etc.

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User research methodologies further explained

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User research methodologies further explained

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- Qualitative research

This involves collecting and analysing non-numerical data, for example; text, video or audio. This is used to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can also be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research. Qualitative research is commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.

Qualitative research example questions:
- How do children and adults interpret healthy eating in the UK?

- How is anxiety experienced around the world?

- How can teachers integrate social issues into science curriculums?
- How does social media shape body image in teenagers?

- Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the process of collecting and analyzing numerical data. It can be used to find patterns and averages, make predictions, test causal relationships, and generalize results to wider populations. Quantitative research is widely used in the natural and social sciences: biology, chemistry, psychology, economics, sociology, marketing, etc. In addition, you can also use quantitative research methods for descriptive, correlational or experimental research. To collect quantitative data, you will often need to use operational definitions that translate abstract concepts (e.g., mood) into observable and quantifiable measures (e.g., self-ratings of feelings and energy levels). Once data is collected, you may need to process it before it can be analyzed. For example, survey and test data may need to be transformed from words to numbers. Then, you can use statistical analysis to answer research questions.

Quantitive research example questions:
- What is the demographic makeup of Singapore in 2020?
- How has the average temperature changed globally over the last century?
- Does environmental pollution affect the prevalence of honey bees?
- Does working from home increase productivity for people with long commutes?

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- Eye tracking study
- Product analytics
- A/B testing / Multivariate testing
- Quantitative usability testing (benchmarking)
- Card sorting
- Tree testing

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- Participant observation (also known as contextual inquiry)
- Moderated and unmoderated usability testing
- In-depth interviews
- Focus groups

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- Quantitative research
- Qualitative research

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User research mainly focuses on understanding user behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis and other feedback methodologies. It is also described as the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience.

In addition, User research covers a wide range of methods, from ethnographic interviews with your target group, to classical usability studies, to quantitive measurements of return in investments (ROI) on your user experience design.

What all user research has in common is that it helps place people at the centre of your design process and products.

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Research in Practice: Insights from Industry with Deloitte Digital

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Research in Practice: Insights from Industry with Deloitte Digital

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I started this research piece by attending Angelo Gianpaolo Bucci's 'Poetics and Politics of Representation in Image Making' talk on Friday 11th of February 2022.

Gianpaolo Bucci spoke to us about how humans interpret wavelengths differently and used the dress controversy of 2015 as an example. This is what sparked my interest to carry on researching this particular case study. Whilst Gianpaolo Bucci was speaking to us about this, I had various questions and since I am a visual learner, it made more sense for me to take this on as an independent research project to find out more. The way I have been able to push myself further is by firstly, attending a specific talk, this is something that I have never really done. Most of my research comes from the internet and I try to only look at reliable sources. However, for this topic, I attended Gianpaolo Bucci's talk and then went further by fact checking scientists statements and quotes that I came across whilst looking at other research material. This was quite challenging for me, as I had to go through various different sources to get the most accurate information and usually I would not really put in this much time and effort into my research. That being said, this task has definitely taught me what to look out for in the future and I am confident that my future research projects will be very different to the ones that I have done in the past, prior to this assignment.

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Based on my research, I have come to the conclusion that this may be down to an optical illusion, stemming from how the human brain processes colours. The brain's perception can be thrown by the colours of nearby objects, and their reflected light falling on the object in focus.

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The dress controversy took place in 2015, when a woman posted a picture of her wearing a dress on Tumblr and asked people to help her figure out what colours the dress was. The post went viral on Twitter overnight, with people having split answers. Which then formed #TeamBlueandBlack and #TeamWhiteandGold

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I personally believe that Psychology is a fascinating area of study. I feel like it helps you understand human behaviour and mental processes and allows you to better understand how we think act and feel as humans. My interest in Psychology began when I started wanting to know the answer to questions such as why do people act the way they do? What shapes our personality? etc. Due to this, psychology is something that I have always wanted to explore further and I feel like this is the perfect opportunity for me to do just that.

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People’s perceived color is also informed by their perception of lighting. And the image of the dress, taken on a cellphone, contained a lot of uncertainty in terms of lighting conditions. Was it taken inside or outside? This matters because it implies artificial or natural light. Was the dress illuminated from the front or the back? This matters because if it was back-lit, it would be in a shadow, otherwise not.

The brain cannot be accused of epistemic modesty. It is well-known that in situations like this—where it faces profound uncertainty—it confidently fills in the gaps in knowledge by making assumptions. Usually, its assumptions are based on what it has most frequently encountered in the past. For instance, if the sensory information is more uncertain, observers will estimate object speeds to be slower than they actually are, presumably because slow objects are much more common in the environment than fast ones. (Indeed, most objects in any given field of view don’t move at all.) Color and lighting are no exception.

Quoted from: https://slate.com/technology/2017/04/heres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.html

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Slate's archives are full of fascinating stories. We're republishing this article because it remains a reader favorite. It was originally published April 12, 2017.
One of psychologist Robert Zajonc's lasting contributions to science is the "mere exposure effect," or the observation that people tend to like things if they are exposed to them more often. Much of advertising is based on this notion. But it was sorely tested in late February 2015, when " the dress " broke the internet. Within days, most people were utterly sick of seeing or talking about it. I can only assume that now, two years later, you have very limited interest in being here. (Thank you for being here.)

But the phenomenon continues to be utterly fascinating to vision scientists like me, and for good reason. The very existence of "the dress" challenged our entire understanding of color vision. Up until early 2015, a close reading of the literature could suggest that the entire field had gone somewhat stale-we thought we basically knew how color vision worked, more or less. The dress upended that idea. No one had any idea why some people see "the dress" differently than others-we arguably still don't fully understand it. It was like discovering a new continent. Plus, the stimulus first arose in the wild (in England, no less), making it all the more impressive. (Most other stimuli used by vision science are generally created in labs.)

Even outside of vision scientists, most people just assume everyone sees the world in the same way. Which is why it's awkward when disagreements arise-it suggests one party either is ignorant, is malicious, has an agenda, or is crazy. We believe what we see with our own eyes more than almost anything else, which may explain the feuds that occurred when "the dress" first struck and science lacked a clear explanation for what was happening.

Two years later we have a much better idea of what may have been a reason for the varied perceptions: People's perceived color is also informed by their perception of lighting. And the image of the dress, taken on a cellphone, contained a lot of uncertainty in terms of lighting conditions. Was it taken inside or outside? This matters because it implies artificial or natural light. Was the dress illuminated from the front or the back? This matters because if it was back-lit, it would be in a shadow, otherwise not.

The brain cannot be accused of epistemic modesty. It is well-known that in situations like this-where it faces profound uncertainty-it confidently fills in the gaps in knowledge by making assumptions. Usually, its assumptions are based on what it has most frequently encountered in the past. For instance, if the sensory information is more uncertain, observers will estimate object speeds to be slower than they actually are, presumably because slow objects are much more common in the environment than fast ones. (Indeed, most objects in any given field of view don't move at all.) Color and lighting are no exception.

As the illumination conditions are impossible to clearly assess in the dress image, people make assumptions about what they are. Different people do this in differing ways, which is what causes the different interpretations of color. At least, that's what my research shows, thanks to 13,000 people, including many Slate readers, who took surveys on what they saw when they saw the dress and also compiled other information about how they generally perceived the photo and the world.

Remember, the dress is actually blue and black, though most people saw it as white and gold, at least at first. My research showed that if you assumed the dress was in a shadow, you were much more likely to see it as white and gold. Why? Because shadows overrepresent blue light. Mentally subtracting short-wavelength light (which would appear blue-ish) from an image will make it look yellow-ish. Natural light has a similar effect-people who thought it was illuminated by natural light were also more likely to see it as white and gold. Why? Because the sky is blue, daylight also overrepresents short wavelengths, compared with relatively long-wavelength artificial (until recently, usually incandescent) light. Just as mentally subtracting blue light leaves the image looking more yellow, mentally subtracting yellow light from an image leaves an image looking more blue, which is what I found empirically.

Now, why would some people assume one set of lighting conditions and others a different one? That probably depends on the viewing history of the individual observer. How would one study that? One can hardly ask people if they are exposed to more short- or more long-wavelength light. Chances are that most people wouldn't know and definitely would not be able to assess how their histories of light perception is different relative to other people.

I could make one confident prediction, though: All else being equal, people who rise early ("larks") and go to bed at a reasonable time should be exposed to more daylight than those who rise late and go to bed later ("owls"). In contrast, owls could be expected to experience relatively more incandescent light than larks.

It is important to note that everything else is likely not equal. So I expected to find a subtle effect that takes data from thousands of observers to be established. For instance, even if even if someone was a hardcore owl, he or she might be forced by circumstance to work a job that makes him or her get up early.

And this is exactly what I found-the effect is subtle but statistically reliable and dose-dependent; in other words the more someone self-identified as a lark, the more likely he or she was to see the dress image as white and gold. Moreover-and to tie everything up with a bow- owls were more likely to assume that the lighting was artificial, not natural.

As the effect is subtle-really a proxy for illumination exposure history that cannot be expected to correlate perfectly, one should not expect this to hold for every individual observer. Even if someone spends most of their waking time at night, he or she might not use incandescent lighting. But on average, this group will be exposed to more incandescent light than the larks.

As a matter of fact, I can legitimately be accused of being a fairly extreme owl, yet I initially saw "the dress" strongly as white and gold. However, I did assume it to be in a shadow, so that assumption seemed to override the other. Moreover, viewing histories can change. Admittedly, I looked more at images of dresses (and this specific one at that) in the days following "the dress" than in my entire life before that combined. And it quite abruptly changed to a black and blue percept after four days, and I have never seen it as white and gold again. Of course, I also learned the true color of the dress in the intervening time, and my research suggests that people are more likely to switch to the true color of the dress than vice versa. Some people probably have such finely balanced assumptions that any number of factors could yield their percept to switch rapidly. These people are rare. They need to be found and studied in labs.

Regardless, this point about subtle effects under complicated conditions is an important one. Making the claim that self-identified circadian type can influence perception is unusual. And I wanted to get it right, so I did an internal replication of these findings before seeking publication, which delayed publication by well over a year. (I had 97 percent of the data from the original run within a month of the dress release and could have published right then and there.)

This brings me to the final reason why the dress is important: It's been over two years since "the dress," but this paper and another one that just came out represent the first truly rigorous studies on the dress effect.

Good science takes time. I want to be comfortable that my findings are true before publishing them, so that they will stand the test of time. Yet this approach is remarkably uncommon. Given our current science environment, all incentives are aligned to rush to publication and to prioritize quantity over quality of papers. If this is the case, it should not be surprising that scandals-putting entire bodies of work into question and possibly invalidating decades of work-surface with some regularity. Indeed, most of science is currently mired in a "replication crisis," with only about 1 in 4 reported findings standing the test of time in social psychology. The situation is likely even worse in fields like cancer biology or genomics.

All of this suggests that we need to change the way we do science. Civilization needs reliable, high-quality science to advance further. Unlikely as it might seem from the outside, research on "the dress" could lead the way.

On that note, please take this brief (five-minute) survey in the spirit of #citizenscience. So as not to taint the results, we can't talk too much about what we are testing here, but the purpose is to address some lingering questions about the dress effect and related stimuli. And please bear with me and my colleagues talking about this for years to come.

Decoder Ring: The Truth About #TheDress

An unassuming photo of a party dress showed how seeing is believing.

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We Finally Know Why People Saw "The Dress" Differently

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The science behind why people saw different colors.

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Wafa Al Jabry

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Wavelength is inversely proportional to frequency. This means the longer the wavelength, the lower the frequency. In the same manner, the shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency will be.

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Wavelength can be defined as the distance between two successive crests or troughs of a wave. It is measured in the direction of the wave.

Wavelength is the distance from one crest to another, or from one trough to another, of a wave (which may be an electromagnetic wave, a sound wave, or any other wave). Crest is the highest point of the wave whereas the trough is the lowest. Since wavelength is distance/length, it is measured in units of lengths such as metres, centimetres, milimetres, nanometres, etc.

Wavelength of light varies with colours, i.e., it is different for every colour. Red colour has the longest wavelength while violet has the least. The wavelength of UV radiation is shorter than violet light. Similarly, the wavelength of infra red radiation is longer than the wavelength of red light.

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Reasoning/Explanation behind differing views on the dress

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Reasoning/Explanation behind differing views on the dress

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'Light enters the eye through the lens---different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you're looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the "real" color of the object.'

Quoted from https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

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Not since Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern has one blue dress been the source of so much consternation.

(And yes, it's blue.)

The fact that a single image could polarize the entire Internet into two aggressive camps is, let's face it, just another Thursday. But for the past half-day, people across social media have been arguing about whether a picture depicts a perfectly nice bodycon dress as blue with black lace fringe or white with gold lace fringe. And neither side will budge. This fight is about more than just social media---it's about primal biology and the way human eyes and brains have evolved to see color in a sunlit world.

Light enters the eye through the lens---different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you're looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the "real" color of the object. "Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance," says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. "But I've studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I've ever seen." (Neitz sees white-and-gold.)

Usually that system works just fine. This image, though, hits some kind of perceptual boundary. That might be because of how people are wired. Human beings evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes color. That chromatic axis varies from the pinkish red of dawn, up through the blue-white of noontime, and then back down to reddish twilight. "What's happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you're trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis," says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. "So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black." (Conway sees blue and orange, somehow.)

We asked our ace photo and design team to do a little work with the image in Photoshop, to uncover the actual red-green-blue composition of a few pixels. That, we figured, would answer the question definitively. And it came close.

In the image as presented on, say, BuzzFeed, Photoshop tells us that the places some people see as blue do indeed track as blue. But...that probably has more to do with the background than the actual color. "Look at your RGB values. R 93, G 76, B 50. If you just looked at those numbers and tried to predict what color that was, what would you say?" Conway asks.

So...kind of orange-y?

"Right," says Conway. "But you're doing this very bad trick, which is projecting those patches on a white background. Show that same patch on a neutral black background and I bet it would appear orange." He ran it through Photoshop, too, and now figures that the dress is actually blue and orange.

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The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress

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Not since Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern has one blue dress been the source of so much consternation. (And yes, it's blue.) The fact that a single image could polarize the entire Internet into two aggressive camps is, let's face it, just another Thursday.

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Poetics and Politics of Representation in Image Making, by Angelo Gianpaolo Bucci 

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Poetics and Politics of Representation in Image Making, by Angelo Gianpaolo Bucci 

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https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

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Not since Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern has one blue dress been the source of so much consternation.

(And yes, it's blue.)

The fact that a single image could polarize the entire Internet into two aggressive camps is, let's face it, just another Thursday. But for the past half-day, people across social media have been arguing about whether a picture depicts a perfectly nice bodycon dress as blue with black lace fringe or white with gold lace fringe. And neither side will budge. This fight is about more than just social media---it's about primal biology and the way human eyes and brains have evolved to see color in a sunlit world.

Light enters the eye through the lens---different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you're looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the "real" color of the object. "Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance," says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. "But I've studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I've ever seen." (Neitz sees white-and-gold.)

Usually that system works just fine. This image, though, hits some kind of perceptual boundary. That might be because of how people are wired. Human beings evolved to see in daylight, but daylight changes color. That chromatic axis varies from the pinkish red of dawn, up through the blue-white of noontime, and then back down to reddish twilight. "What's happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you're trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis," says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. "So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black." (Conway sees blue and orange, somehow.)

We asked our ace photo and design team to do a little work with the image in Photoshop, to uncover the actual red-green-blue composition of a few pixels. That, we figured, would answer the question definitively. And it came close.

In the image as presented on, say, BuzzFeed, Photoshop tells us that the places some people see as blue do indeed track as blue. But...that probably has more to do with the background than the actual color. "Look at your RGB values. R 93, G 76, B 50. If you just looked at those numbers and tried to predict what color that was, what would you say?" Conway asks.

So...kind of orange-y?

"Right," says Conway. "But you're doing this very bad trick, which is projecting those patches on a white background. Show that same patch on a neutral black background and I bet it would appear orange." He ran it through Photoshop, too, and now figures that the dress is actually blue and orange.

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The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress

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Not since Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern has one blue dress been the source of so much consternation. (And yes, it's blue.) The fact that a single image could polarize the entire Internet into two aggressive camps is, let's face it, just another Thursday.