<P> In the UK, where the phenomenon had begun, Ian Johnson, creative manager for dress manufacturer Roman Originals, learned of the controversy from his Facebook news feed that morning . "I was pretty gobsmacked . I just laughed and told the wife that I'd better get to work," he said . </P> <P> Businesses that had nothing to do with the dress, or even the clothing industry, devoted social media attention to the phenomenon . Adobe retweeted another Twitter user who had used some of the company's apps to isolate the dress's colours . "We jumped in the conversation and thought, Let's see what happens," recalled Karen Do, the company's senior manager for social media . Jenna Bromberg, senior digital brand manager for Pizza Hut, saw the dress as white and gold and quickly sent out a tweet with a picture of pizza noting that it, too, was the same colours . Do called it "literally a tweet heard around the world". </P> <P> Ben Fischer of the New York Business Journal reported that interest in the first BuzzFeed article about the dress exhibited vertical growth instead of the typical bell curve of a viral phenomenon, leading BuzzFeed to assign two editorial teams to generate additional articles about the dress to drive ad revenue, and by 1 March, the original BuzzFeed article had received over 37 million views . The dress was cited by CNN commentator Mel Robbins as a viral phenomenon having the requisite qualities of positivity bias incorporating "awe, laughter and amusement," and was compared to and contrasted with the llama chase earlier that day, as well as to tributes paid to actor Leonard Nimoy after his death the following day . </P> <P> The dress itself was confirmed as a royal blue "Lace Bodycon Dress" from the retailer Roman Originals, which was actually blue - and - black in colour; although available in three other colours (red, pink, and ivory, each with black lace), a white and gold version was not available at the time . The day after McNeil's post, Roman Originals' website experienced a major surge in traffic; a representative of the retailer stated that "we sold out of the dress in the first 30 minutes of our business day and after restocking it, it's become phenomenal". On 28 February, Roman announced that they would make a single white and gold dress for a Comic Relief charity auction . </P>

Black and blue gold and white dress illusion