French Connection / FCUK

French Connection was founded in London in 1972 by Stephen Marks and grew into one of Britain's most recognised fashion brands, its initialism FCUK — coined in 1997 after an internal memo abbreviating the French Connection Hong Kong office as FCHK — becoming one of the more deliberately provocative pieces of branding in contemporary fashion history. The acronym transformed the brand's public identity and preceded its move into fragrance by several years. The first FCUK fragrances, fcuk her and fcuk him, launched in 2004 and continued the brand's tradition of calculated irreverence. Composed by perfumers including Philippe Romano and Corinne Cachen, they were positioned as accessible, confident, and young-skewing — scents that matched the brand's denim-and-attitude fashion identity without requiring the prestige pricing of designer fragrance competitors. The fragrances sold strongly, benefiting from the brand's visibility and the residual notoriety of the FCUK campaign. French Connection's fragrance line sits within the accessible tier, distributed through department stores and mass-market fragrance retail. The house is currently part of MIP Holdings and continues operating both its fashion and fragrance businesses.