French Connection / FCUK
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Peach and blackcurrant collide in a jammy, slightly fizzy rush that smells like fruit cordial mixed too strong, the apple providing a fleeting tartness before surrendering to the sweeter elements. Within minutes, there's a curious sourness creeping in—that rancid oil note manifesting as barely-turned cream beneath the fruit bowl.
The white floral trio blooms with surprising force, jasmine and rose wrestling for dominance whilst lily of the valley adds a green, soapy sharpness that cuts through the remaining fruit sweetness. The rancidity becomes more integrated here, reading as genuine indolic depth rather than simple spoilage, giving the florals an almost unwashed hair quality that's strangely magnetic.
Vetiver and sandalwood finally assert themselves, creating a slightly dusty, pencil-shaving dryness that grounds the lingering musky sweetness of tonka. What remains is a skin-close warmth that smells like sun cream mixed with body heat, the florals reduced to a vague powdery memory, the fruit long departed.
Summer Her opens with a bruised fruit salad that's been sitting in a hot car—overripe peach bleeding into tart blackcurrant and oxidised apple, creating an oddly compelling sweetness that borders on fermented. There's an early-80s optimism here, before niche perfumery taught us to fear accessibility, when a unisex fragrance simply meant layering white florals over everything and hoping for the best. The jasmine-rose-muguet trinity arrives with all the subtlety of a department store tester spritz, but there's something genuinely interesting happening underneath: a peculiar rancidity that the listed notes openly acknowledge, suggesting either deliberate animalic funk or simply the patina of age on whatever samples remain from 1983. Santantoni hasn't tried to make this feel expensive or refined; instead, it reads as deliberately casual, a fruity-floral rendered in thick marker strokes rather than watercolour. The sandalwood and vetiver base provides just enough woody structure to keep this from collapsing into pure fruit-syrup territory, whilst the tonka and musk add a skin-like warmth that could read as either comforting or slightly unwashed, depending on your tolerance for vintage body. This is for someone who finds modern fruity fragrances too polished, too apologetic—someone who remembers when "fresh" meant something slightly sweaty and human rather than aquatic and abstract. Wear it to summer festivals where you'll be dancing too close to strangers, or anywhere you want to smell like optimistic youth with slightly questionable hygiene choices.
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3.5/5 (96)