Vans Sneakers: What Color Do You See?

A picture of “Old Skool” Vans sneakers that was published on to Twitter by user @TFILDOLANS on October 11th, has created a dispute on social media and between friends. Different people are seeing the Vans shoes as different color combinations: pink with white laces, or gray with teal laces.

AHS senior Kaiyli Whelan says, “The shoes are teal and gray. I don’t understand how you could see any other color.”

AHS senior Marleh Lehmann says, “I have only ever seen pink and white. How could anyone see any other color? I really don’t get it.”

Of the students surveyed in senior study hall, seven students saw gray shoes with teal laces, and five saw pink shoes with white laces.

So the question remains, what color are the shoes actually?

On the Vans website, the Old Skool sneakers are listed as “Mahogany Rose with True White laces.” Gray shoes with teal laces is not even a choice for a color scheme of this type of sneakers.

In addition, according to Brenda Santana from Elite Daily, the Twitter user who originally posted the image says, “It’s originally pink & white, the flash & bad quality camera is what makes appear teal & grey or pink & white.”

To explain how people can see different colors, AP Psychology teacher Jen Brown says, “You will see whatever color you ‘focus’ on. At first I saw gray and teal, but then I saw pink and white. It changes due to lighting, angle, and afterimage on the eye.”

AHS senior Chris Krier, similar to Brown, says, “I’ve seen both colors. If you change the view of the phone, you can see both color combinations.”

People seeing different colors of clothing posted on social media is similar to the “dress” picture posted two years ago in which people were also seeing the piece of clothing as two different color combinations: white and gold, or black and blue.

“The human brain can play tricks on us,” says AHS junior Morgan Konopka. “I think it’s so cool to even think that while everyone’s brain looks the same, and probably works the same for the most part, our mind is still seeing the shoes as different colors. I did see pink and white though.”