"The Bag" Is The New "The Dress"

In 2015, lives were shattered and relationships torn asunder by The Dress, a frock that may or may not have been blue and black or white and gold. Survivors of the conflict, brace yourselves: We’ve got another color perception war on our hands. “The Bag” is the new “The Dress,” and soon everyone will be asking, “Is the bag blue or white? For the love of God, is the bag blue or white??” while clawing at their eyes and fighting in the streets. Yes, it’s happening again. If you’ve only just managed to restore your faith in your own perceptions after the Great Dress Color War of 2015, you may want to back away slowly from this one.

It all started when @whyofcorso (aka Taylor F. Corso of Feminist Drilljoy) posted an image of a Kate Spade bag on Twitter. “Everyone say hello to my new baby,” she wrote. Seems harmless right? Cute bag, no big deal. But then, someone tweeted, “White. Daring,” to which Corso responded, “it’s blue.” Suddenly, the Twitterverse did a collective, “Wait, what?”

Honestly, this bag looks completely white to me, and I’d have a hard time believing that it’s blue if I hadn’t already been burned by the whole “The Dress” debacle last year (“White and gold. It’s white and gold. Why can’t you monsters see it??”) People on Twitter seem divided, with some swearing it’s white, and others seeing the blue.

For her part, Corso has identified the bag as Kate Spade’s Cedar Street Hayden bag, in “Mystic Blue.” Look, if that’s what she says, then I believe her, but are we sure that the “mystic” part of “mystic blue” isn’t that it’s a magic shade that spontaneously turns white in an effort to make random people like myself doubt their perceptions and, you know, the foundation of reality itself? Just a thought.

We know from previous color controversies that our perceptions of color are subjective. Our visual systems take in information, and our brains then have to interpret the data — and sometimes, they don’t interpret it in the same way. So let’s just chalk this bag debate up to “Hey, aren’t human brains interesting?” and skip the battle — I’m not sure human civilization can weather another color war.

Image: gratisography/Pexels