However, the retailer said that FCUK will continue to be used and will appear on some labelling and non-clothing products.
"FCUK is interchangeable with French Connection as the company's name, and so will continue to exist and be used," a company spokeswoman said.
The news comes as the firm reported a 9% sales decline and suffered a profit drop of 68% in the six months to July 31, down from 拢16.2m in 2004 to 拢5.1m in 2005. The company's chief executive Stephen Marks blamed poor performance on "a challenging six-month period, during which the retail environment in the UK has continued to worsen".
In the last couple of years, speculation regarding the scrapping of FCUK has been fuelled by moves by the retailer to downgrade the logo. Last summer, French Connection tested an unbranded store format called 191 in an attempt to combat consumer apathy towards the FCUK brand. The French Connection and FCUK brands were only visible on labels and products.
According to a report in The Mail on Sunday, the axing of FCUK has been "widely welcomed". The paper quoted Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, whose condemnatory remarks were hardly surprising. "It's about time too," she said. "It has simply coarsened sensibilities and was also unnecessary."
The FCUK strapline was the brainchild of Trevor Beattie in 1997, who was then the creative director at ad agency TBWA\London. Since the introduction of the line, the clothing retailer has been censured six times by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The French Connection ad account shifted out of TBWA\London and into former executive creative director Trevor Beattie's new agency, Beattie McGuinness Bungay, in May.
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