In April 1997, French Connection began branding their clothes "fcuk" (usually written in lowercase). Large stores are in Leeds and London. Though they insisted it was an acronym for French Connection United Kingdom, its similarity to the word "f**k" caused controversy.[2] French Connection fully exploited this and produced an extremely popular range of t-shirts with messages such as "fcuk fashion"
, "fcuk this", "hot as fcuk", "mile high fcuk", "too busy to fcuk", "lucky fcuk", "Fun Comes Usually Kneeling", "fcuk on the beach", etc. There were also a number of regionally specific messages, such as "fondle constantly until knackered" (in the UK), "fcuk in hull" (bearing similarity to "f**king hell") and "no fcukin worries" (in Australia) and "fcuk off". "Chugging the fcuk" and "Munching on fcuk" were popular shirt titles but were later found as inappropriate. Designer Daniel Greenwood later sued the company for inconsistency in shirt titles and lack of lenience. Apparently they first discovered the acronym when a fax was sent from their Hong Kong store FCHK to FCUK.
