Linda Evangelista’s Secret Baby Daddy Is PPR CEO François-Henri Pinault

by Julia Rubin | 12:36 pm, July 1st, 2011

You may know François-Henri Pinault as the CEO of PPR, that big ol’ conglomerate that owns Gucci Group, which includes Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, and Balenciaga. You may also know him as Salma Hayek‘s husband. You probably don’t know him as Linda Evangelista‘s baby daddy. But, hey, he is!

Now this is what we call a super juicy scandal. Linda Evangelista has a 4-year-old son named Augustin James, who goes by Augie. She has never revealed who Augie’s father is, though there was speculation that an American architect was the dad. Evangelista’s reps denied Pinault was Augie’s father back in the fall of 2007…right after Pinault’s then-finace Hayek gave birth to a daughter named Valentina. Valentina is less than a year younger than Augie. As the timeline goes, it appears as though Pinault knocked Evangelista up during a break from Hayek. Hayek and Pinault married in 2009.

That is all to say, Evangelista was keen on keeping the identity of her son’s father a secret. Alas, a trip to family court has blown the lid off this one. Pinault and Evangelista are in the midst of working out a support agreement in regards to their son, and the talks aren’t going very smoothly. According to the New York Post, Evangelista has been to court a handful of times, and with no agreement reached, the pair may have to go to trial in the fall.

It seems odd that such a case is being handled in court, instead of through a private settlement of sorts. Evangelista and Pinault have gone so far as to deny his paternity publicly! Oops? May this be a lesson: dirty laundry rarely goes unaired. Also, somewhere Bernard Arnault is smiling.

[NYP]

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