FCUK Fashion

FCUK is a British fashion store that sells a range of fashionable pieces in the mid market price range.

The brand started life as French Connection and was founded in 1972 by Stephen Marks. The store was set up to set up with the aim to create well-designed, fashionable clothing that would appeal to a broad market. Back in 1976 it launched a men’s wear range in a bid to cater for the well-designed, accessible men’s casualwear market.

Also in the 1970s, 1078 to be exact, the brand hired designer Nicole Farhi who had worked for a number of French and Italian labels, in fact Fahri headed up the brands entire range as well as designing her own label.

Despite nearly going under in the 1980s the brand managed to relaunch itself and became hugely successful in the 1990s. This is mostly due to its rebranding at the end of 1990s when it repositioned itself on the high street.

In 1997 the FCUK brand was launched, an abbreviation of French Connection UK, onto the world’s high streets. Supposedly the acronym was first coined when a store in Hong Kong sent a fax entitled “FCHK to FCUK”.

The brand then traded on the controversy surrounding the new name by launching a new advertising campaign with slogans such as “fcuk fashion”, “fcuk this”, “hot as fcuk”, “mile high fcuk”, many of which were also put on to T-shirts. In fact the advertising campaign was so successful that it decided to drop the French Connection and became known as FCUK from then on.

Since then the company has continued to innovate with regards to its advertising campaign. In 2006 it launched its fashion vs style campaign with Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. The ads featured two women in the guise of fashion and style fighting for supremacy.

Their current advertising campaign features “the man” and “the woman” and shows stark, grainy black and white photos.

Now days FCUK is a staple of the British highstreet as well as being a world wide brand and not to mention internet favourite which is still hugely popular.