Pickleball is taking off — and fashion brands are cottoning on

When Varley co-founder Lara Mead was exploring ways to launch the London-based activewear brand’s new Club collection, she initially considered hosting a morning of tennis or a round of golf. Instead, she headed to Salt Lake City, Utah, to host a tournament for an emerging but rapidly growing sport called pickleball, a fast-paced tennis-badminton hybrid played close to the net, which fans praise as friendlier and more accessible than its antecedents.

“What I love about pickleball is that you can actually run around, compete, get a sweat on and still have a conversation while playing,” says Mead, who first encountered the sport when she lived in Los Angeles in the late 2010s. “It’s quicker-paced and more sociable than tennis.”

Across the US, the new soundtrack of summer is the thwop-thwop of plastic balls being batted across the net at pickleball matches. Pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in the US for three years in a row. According to the 2023 report from the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, participation in the US nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022 to 8.9mn players. The sport is gaining fans internationally, too.

Tennis clothes lend themselves naturally to pickleball — both games are played on a court, across a net, and devotees often find their way to the latter via the former. But in place of crisp tennis whites, many pickleball players have embraced a wackier aesthetic that can incorporate animal print, high-vis fluoro hues and novelty graphics. Sometimes all in the same outfit.

The pickleball opportunity hasn’t escaped fashion and activewear brands. “So many friends began playing and there didn’t seem to be a uniform for it,” Alice + Olivia chief executive and creative director Stacey Bendet writes in an email. She decided to create one, introducing a pickleball capsule collection of sporty separates made from excess mask fabric in 2022. Since then, periodic drops of the floral-print cropped tees and mini skirts have sold out “very quickly” from Alice + Olivia stores in the Hamptons, Miami and Mayfair.

Bendet, whose husband’s enthusiasm led the couple to build a pickleball court at their Hamptons house, understands the appeal: “It’s like party tennis! It’s less formal, more fun . . . Women want clothes that feel flirty and functional when they play.”

And not, perhaps, as though they’re strapping in for real exertion. Norma Kamali, a designer known for the swimwear and stretch-jersey dresses she’s made since the 1970s, found that her friends had become increasingly evangelical about pickleball. They urged her to design something stylish for the court, so she named a design from her spring/summer 2023 collection the “Sleeveless Pickleball Dress”. The garment comes with a built-in bodysuit and very short hemline.

“They’re named pickleball dresses because they have an athletic spirit about them,” Kamali says. “However, they’ve been seen dancing at parties in heels as well.”

Pickleball paddles too are ripe for customisation. J Crew and preppy ecommerce site Tuckernuck have both collaborated with pickleball brand Recess on paddles and gear. Cynthia Rowley has released limited-edition paddles. And Moda Operandi included a paddle and set of pickleballs in its new Club Moda summer capsule collection. (The luxury etailer’s “pickleball edit” also contains exclusive designs from The Frankie Shop, Leset and Sergio Hudson.)

For a sport with a silly name, pickleball has attracted a surprising number of fans within the fashion community. Designer Tory Burch has referred to the game as her “obsession”. (She doesn’t design clothes specifically for pickleball, but a spokesperson noted that the tennis dresses and skirts from her Tory Sport range would be at home on a pickleball court.) Models Heidi Klum and Kate Upton have both invested in professional teams.

Players can dress for games pretty much however they like. While tennis style is highly codified — Wimbledon specifies the amount of colour permitted on competitors’ outfits down to the centimetre — conventions around dressing for pickleball are permissive to the point of nonexistent. “At my tennis club in London, I think I have to wear 80 per cent white,” Mead says of the Roehampton Club. “The nice thing about pickle is that it’s a similar look, but you can be a little more playful, a bit more colourful. That’s great for anyone who enjoys fashion.”

There’s no dress code, though the official USA Pickleball rule book states that tournament players may be required to change out of “inappropriate” apparel, “including that which approximates the colour of the ball”.

“But who knows what colour ball you’re going to be playing with?” asks Karen Mitchell, chair and co-founding director of PickleballEngland, aghast at this whiff of restriction. “We’re a bit more relaxed here because we have so many different ball colours. We encourage people to wear clothes they can play comfortably in, and shoes with some ankle support, but that’s it,” she says.

While a preponderance of pickleball apparel still consists of T-shirts decorated with cartoonish pickles or insider puns about “kitchens” and “dinks”, there are sleeker options. In the US, “Pickleball Clothes” is one of the top categories on Lululemon’s US website, and Fila and Alo Yoga sponsor professional pickleball players.

Fila, which backs top American player Anna Leigh Waters, was the first major brand to design and develop a performance pickleball shoe. When the brand launched the Volley Zone court shoe in 2019, sales “definitely exceeded our expectations”, says Lauren Mallon, Fila’s senior director of marketing and strategic partnerships for tennis and pickleball.

While she declines to share sales figures, Mallon says brand executives find the sport’s cross-demographic appeal, the rise of pickleball-specific retailers and the opening of entertainment complexes combining courts, restaurants and retail in key markets promising.

“Pickleball is becoming such a part of lifestyle,” Mallon says. “The true market opportunity has yet to be realised in this space. There’s still so much potential and opportunity for growth in this category and sport.”

“It would be great to see brands start supporting pickleball players here the same way they do tennis players,” says Thaddea Lock, a former professional tennis player who found her way to pickleball after an illness and is now the UK’s number-one female player. “I think it’ll happen in the next couple of years.”

Lock wears outfits for pickleball that are “very similar” to what she wore for tennis — mostly Nike and Adidas tennis skirts and shirts from ProXR, her paddle sponsor. Still, she enjoys the “wacky” outfits that some players embrace, such as flamingo-print co-ords and cow-print tracksuit bottoms.

“People are more willing to have fun with their fashion and experiment with it in pickleball than in tennis,” she says. “Which makes sense. Pickleball is a social sport that’s easy to pick up and that anyone can play. Having fun comes with the territory.”

Find out about our latest stories first — follow @financialtimesfashion on Instagram