Local turns passion for pickleball into PickleBelle jewelry line
Encinitas’ Irina Rachow, a longtime designer and retailer in San Diego, has created a playful jewelry collection for the growing number of pickleball enthusiasts. With over 40 designs, the PickleBelle collection features bejeweled pickleball and paddle charms in necklaces, bracelets and earrings all made from 18k gold, sterling silver, quality crystals and non-farmed diamonds.
“It’s been a hoot and I constantly come up with different things,” said Rachow of the line that taps into the positive pickleball vibe.
Rachow has been an area retailer for over 30 years, with her Madison boutique in Seaport Village and Sheridan at the Rancho Valencia Resort in Rancho Santa Fe. She previously owned the Fairen Del boutique in Flower Hill Promenade, which she moved to Del Mar Highlands Town Center in 2020. The new Fairen Del was only open for nine days before the COVID shutdown. Then in the following months the store suffered damages from flooding in the restaurant above her. Rachow was forced to walk away from the boutique which she had put so much time, love and energy into.
After the disappointment of her store shuttering, she made the decision to shift gears and start making her own jewelry: “I don’t dwell on the negative,” Rachow said.
She worked with factories to produce her jewelry designs and begin selling them—her daughter Fairen, a senior at San Dieguito Academy, also helped her with some of the designs. Under the Everwild Designs parent company she has five different brands including Dark Horse, jewelry for equestrians; Touchstone, Braille-inspired jewelry with hidden messages; Saints & Saviors, medieval and romantic tribute pieces; and Everwild, animal talisman jewelry like her signature wolf cuff ring inscribed with “Courage is a decision”.
Of all of the jewelry lines, PickleBelle has been the one that has really taken off.
Like many people, Rachow discovered pickleball during the pandemic, introduced to the popular new sport in her friend’s Rancho Santa Fe backyard. She loved how positive and social the game was—she now plays pickleball several times a week with bunches of friends, frequently at Bobby Riggs Racket and Paddle.
“It’s so addicting,” Rachow said of the sport. “Anyone can play and it’s so fun, you just meet so many people and I always get invited to play.”
She also really liked the idea of pickleball jewelry as it was such an outlier from the other designs she was doing with Everwild—it was a chance to be more fun and playful.
Rachow has been surprised and delighted by the response from customers: “The Dainty Dinker” has been a top seller with its combination of paddle and ball on silver or gold chains and the “Hoopla” ball and paddle earring has also been extremely popular.
“I sell from corner to corner of this country,” said Rachow, noting she has also sold internationally to pickleball fanatics in France, Italy and Spain.
The online retailer Uncommon Goods picked up some pieces and the line is featured in the pro shop at Rancho Valencia Resort, where they converted tennis courts into eight pickleball courts.
Not only is her jewelry cute and fun but PickleBelle also follows sustainable practices where possible and has embedded an environmental give-back with every purchase. Rachow, a longtime member of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Nature Conservancy, has paired Everwild with the National Wildlife Federation’s acreage adoption program. The organization offers ranchers a fair price in exchange for their agreement to retire their public land grazing leases forever. Since 2002, they have secured over 1.5 million acres of habitat in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, benefiting animals such as grizzlies, wolves and bison.
“I get really excited about it, leaving the land forever wild. Each piece of jewelry protects an acre,” Rachow said. “I’m doing something meaningful to protect wild spaces.”
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