If you were outside the lower/middle school before school on May 1, you may have noticed a large, glittery group of students and faculty parading around. It wasn’t a coincidence that they all showed up to school wearing bedazzled outfits—those students were participating in Fancy Sparkly Day.
Started by a pair of third-graders in 2023, Fancy Sparkly Day is an annual GDS tradition in which students and teachers wear sparkly clothing that makes them feel beautiful. While the day was a lower-school event in 2023 and 2024, Fancy Sparkly Day has since expanded to include both the middle and high schools.
In April 2023, two students in third-grade teacher Todd Carter’s class—Mary Katherine Mulvihill and Samyuktha Narayan—came up with the idea for Fancy Sparkly Day after Mulvihill wore a sparkly shirt to school one day.
“We were like, ‘Why can’t we wear fancy stuff like high heels or sparkly dresses every day?’” Narayan said in an interview with the Bit.
Mulvihill’s sparkly shirt inspired the two to create a day where students were encouraged to wear the sparkly clothes they don’t usually wear to school.
Mulvihill and Narayan brought their proposal to Carter, who loved the idea. “It was in this post-COVID era, and there was nothing fun happening,” Carter said. “And there was a Friday coming up with no assembly.”
Carter worked with the lower school administration to set up an official event. Middle- and high-schoolers were encouraged to come, but the event was originally created for the lower school.
GDS held the very first Fancy Sparkly Day during that Friday assembly time, complete with the third-graders’ handmade signs and a runway for people to show off their glittery outfits.
Last year, Carter applied to the mayor’s office for Fancy Sparkly Day to become an official D.C. day. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser officially proclaimed May 30, 2025, Fancy Sparkly Day, a day for GDS and nearby Janney Elementary School to celebrate. This year, Carter applied once again, and Bowser proclaimed May 1, 2026, Fancy Sparkly Day.
“I think that’s our big goal, right?” Lower School Principal Christy Diefenderfer said of the increased participation in Fancy Sparkly Day. “For this to become more and more community-wide for not only our school, but even into Tenleytown.”
Mulvihill and Narayan are now sixth-graders. As the two transitioned into middle school, they brought the Fancy Sparkly Day tradition along with them.
This year, lower school administrators moved the event up to the beginning of May, instead of its usual occurrence towards the end of the month. Diefenderfer said the move was to increase high school participation before the seniors left while also keeping Fancy Sparkly Day as an end-of-year celebration.
At around 8:20 a.m., the entire lower school, some middle-school advisories and a handful of high-schoolers headed toward the makeshift runway on the pathway near 42nd Street. Some were dressed in sparkly vests and dresses, others in suits and even a few in superhero outfits.
Junior Alicia Kim, who attended Fancy Sparkly Day this year, said she thought the experience was “a cool, fun way to get together and cheer on the little kids.” Kim and the other high-schoolers who attended got to walk the runway with their sparkly clothes on.
Narayan emphasized how important Fancy Sparkly Day is for middle schoolers, who she said she thinks are expected to be more mature than lower schoolers. “You feel like you have to tone it down a little in middle school, but it’s really fun to goof off and be fancy and sparkly,” she said.
“It’s sort of a false notion that school is either serious and rigorous or fun,” Middle School Principal Kelsey Schroeder said. “We don’t believe that here. We really believe that learning and rigor go hand in hand with joy and celebration.”
Kim said she wished more high-schoolers had participated in the event. She said she thought high schoolers should have found out earlier about Fancy Sparkly Day, since high school students first heard about the event from an all-school email the day before.
“I think timing is the main thing,” Kim said. “I think there’s definitely a lot of people who would go if they had known earlier, because they would have had to arrange a ride to get to school earlier.”
“One of the things the high school does really well is bring joy and celebration and fun to school,” Schroeder said, citing Senior Prank Day as an example of a fun high school tradition. “[Fancy Sparkly Day] is of the same spirit, and I love seeing the lower/middle school being able to do more of that.”
After the runway concluded, lower school students performed the dances they learned for the lower school P.E. dance assembly in February.
After the parade ended, many people continued to celebrate. Third-grade teacher Foun Tang hosted a dance party for her class after the assembly.
Carter said his favorite moment from this year’s Fancy Sparkly Day was looking out onto the field later that day, seeing students in P.E. run around and play in their blinged-out attire.
“I love that for the kids here, especially the younger kids, it’s like ‘Oh, yeah, it’s Fancy Sparkly Day,’” Carter said. “It doesn’t sound weird to them.”