On a sunny Friday afternoon in June, I walk down London’s affluent King’s Road to a two-block stretch that features four athleisure stores.

At Alo, racks of sleek matching sets seem designed for women who post their Pilates workouts on Instagram. At Nike, posters feature life-size photos of its sponsored athletes at the World Cup and Wimbledon. At Lululemon, under a heavily sloganed gray wall (“Friends are more important than money”), there’s a giant sales rack featuring a mishmash of athletic wear in clashing colors and, bizarrely, a gold lamé midi skirt made of technical fabric.

Despite their differences, all three stores are decorated in black, white, and gray, with silver metal racks, boxy shelving, and unflattering overhead lighting. And in a coincidence that makes me feel like I’m stuck in some sort of sci-fi loop, the EDM song “10:35” by DJ Tiësto and Tate McRae is playing in all three.

The new kid on the block is different. A Vuori boutique, next to Nike, two doors down from Alo, and facing Lululemon, opened last year. The store has no sharp edges or harsh lighting, just warm walnut wood walls that are smooth and undulating, punctuated by photos of people working out on the beach. The staff is playing Weezer, the early-2000s alt-rock band. And the clothes—outrageously soft to the touch and bearing no visible logo—come in colors so sophisticated that it’s not immediately apparent they are designed for sport.

The 11-year-old company isn’t trendy per se. Vuori’s clothes are only debatably stylish.

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