FP Movement

FP Movement is an activewear and lifestyle boutique in WaterSound Town Center, a line from Free People offering technical fabrics and relaxed silhouettes for studio workouts, travel, and everyday wear. Its spot in the Town Center puts it right alongside the other Plaza Way shops, an easy add-on stop while browsing the rest of WaterSound’s retail row.

Free People’s roots go back to the early 1970s, when Richard Hayne opened a small store in West Philadelphia with his first wife, Judy Wicks, a shop that eventually grew into Urban Outfitters. The Free People label relaunched as a wholesale private brand in 1984, and the company opened its first standalone Free People boutique in Paramus, New Jersey, in 2002. Today, Free People operates as part of Urban Outfitters, Inc., a company that also owns Anthropologie, BHLDN, the home and garden brand Terrain, and the Vetri restaurant group, with Margaret Hayne serving as both chief executive of the parent company and chief creative officer of Free People. From those bohemian roots, Free People has grown into a retailer sold through roughly 1,400 specialty stores worldwide, including well over a hundred freestanding boutiques across the United States and Canada, a reach that helps explain why an activewear spinoff like FP Movement could open its own storefronts, including this one at WaterSound, rather than staying a small section inside existing Free People shops.

FP Movement grew out of that same design studio as a dedicated activewear extension, built for customers who wanted Free People’s easy, unfussy aesthetic in leggings, sports bras, and layering pieces that could go from a sunrise beach run straight into brunch. The line backs its collections with a brand ambassador roster that spans dancers, tennis players, track and field athletes, and rock climbers, reflecting a brand less interested in one narrow definition of fitness and more focused on movement of any kind. That philosophy suits WaterSound well, a community built around biking, walking, and beach days rather than a single sport.

Inside the WaterSound Town Center store, shoppers find the same mix of leggings, joggers, sports bras, and relaxed outerwear that has made FP Movement a fixture at Free People’s other locations, sized and styled for a studio class one minute and a walk down Origins Main Street the next. It is an easy stop for visitors packing light who realize they need one more versatile layer, and for locals who want workout gear that looks just as good paired with sandals on a Town Center evening. Because the line shares DNA with Free People’s broader bohemian catalog, longtime fans of the parent brand tend to recognize the fit and fabric quality immediately, even in a category, activewear, that Free People only expanded into more recently. Shoppers who want to keep browsing after FP Movement do not have far to go either, since the boutique’s Suite 100 address at 19 Plaza Way puts it in the same small building as Hemline 30A, making that stretch of the Town Center an easy two-stop loop for anyone restocking a beach-trip wardrobe.