François Henri Pinault

PPR just bought a new little brother for Gucci. After months of speculation, Christopher Kane's eponymous label is now a member of PPR's stable of luxury brands. On Monday, the French conglomerate purchased a 51 percent stake in the company and revealed plans to help it grow internationally.

Some of those plans include adding another ready-to-wear line to the Kane umbrella and opening the brand's first freestanding store, which will probably set up shop in London next year.

"Christopher Kane is already established as a luxury label and has a tremendous intrinsic growth potential," said PPR CEO Francois-Henri Pinault in a statement. "We thus have great ambitions for the brand and will enable it to benefit from our expertise and know-how while providing the space for it to further develop its own creative identity."

Though PPR now owns a controlling share of Kane's label, Kane told WWD that the company "understands and appreciates our creative independence." That said, PPR has not ruled on appointing a new CEO for the brand at a later date. Currently, Kane's sister Tammy runs the business side of the company.

Both sides agree that the primary objective for Christopher Kane is expansion.

"Our long-term ambition for the company is obviously to grow it into a globally recognized brand," Kane said. "We do not plan to make any immediate or major changes to the way that the business is currently managed. All growth will be gradual and organic."

Rumors that Kane's label would join PPR began shortly after he left his position as the creative director of Versace's secondary brand, Versus. At the time, Balenciaga, another PPR brand, had just announced that its longtime creative director, Nicolas Ghesquière, planned to leave the company. Some believed Kane would replace Ghesquière, but that job eventually went to Alexander Wang.

PPR's executive team is having discussions about backing a new brand, but it's not known yet who the lucky designer to join the fashion conglomerate will be.

"We have been talking about investing in a new luxury name," said PPR CEO Francois-Henri Pinault in an interview with the Financial Times. "We have no more young brands since Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney have all passed the €100 million mark (just over $132 million at current exchange)."

When PPR makes an acquisition, Pinault said, it usually tries to break into an area where it's underrepresented. For example, the firm recently purchased Qeelin, a Hong Kong jewelry operation. Before that, Boucheron was the only jewelry unit in PPR's luxury portfolio. Pinault also made it clear that PPR "will not buy a promising brand and try to move it into another sector."

And though there has been speculation that PPR has been in talks with Christopher Kane, the firm's method of buying new brands would suggest that his label might not be the right fit. Kane's product is certainly different from other PPR brands. But as far as his business model is concerned, Kane's brand is a smaller, younger version of what PPR already has in its stable. Christopher Kane, Stella McCartney, and Alexander McQueen all offer high-end women's clothing — even around the same price point — and all three brands speak to a modern British design sensibility. If PPR did invest in Kane, it would be at odds with how Pinault has described his brand-buying methods.

Still, this hasn't stopped industry observers from honing in on Kane as a possible contender for PPR's investment. He's been a free agent since he left his position as the creative director of Versace's Versus line to focus on his own brand last month. Kane was even mentioned as a possible replacement for Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga.

Francois-Henri Pinault — CEO of the company that owns Balenciaga — says his newest employee Alexander Wang is exactly what the fashion house needed in a new creative director.

In a Q-and-A with CBS reporter Rebecca Jarvis, Pinault said a combination of Wang's youth, worldview, and talent for design made him the perfect candidate to replace Nicolas Ghesquière.

"Alexander Wang is young and he has a very universal culture," Pinault said. "He has a very strong talent not only when it comes to accessible product, but his talent could also be adapted for couture at Balenciaga. It will be a big challenge for him. I like that he's young and based in New York, so we will have more exposure of the brand worldwide. Alexander has this wonderful contemporary brand under his own name and this has nothing to do with Balenciaga. We will not change anything in the positioning. We have spent a lot of time determining where the brand is and where we want to stay in terms of being very modern and avant-garde, but still being influenced by the street. Nicolas was one of the best at this."

Wang will no doubt have big shoes to fill, but Pinault said his Asian heritage "was not a criteria for recruitment at all. It was really [a matter of] let's find the right talent, the right skills, the right profile for the reality of the brand. . . We plan to continue to build on what has been built by Nicolas. We needed someone who was capable of coping with that."

A judge has approved a child support settlement between Francois-Henri Pinault and Linda Evangelista for the care of their 5-year-old son, Augustin.

The terms of the deal are undisclosed, but one source close to the proceedings told the New York Post that Pinault had "gone a long way toward meeting those original demands." Evangelista and Pinault made the agreement by phone on Monday morning, the third day of four scheduled days in court. A magistrate in Manhattan approved the deal Tuesday afternoon.

"Everybody's glad for the sake and the benefit of the child that it's done," said Pinault's lawyer, David Aronson.

Evangelista was originally reported to have asked for $46,000 a month in child support for Augustin — which would cover a 24-hour-a-day nanny and armed security guards — but her lawyer William Beslow said during testimony that that figure was overstated.

After making the agreement with Pinault Monday morning, Evangelista donned a Prada gown for Monday night's Met Gala, which celebrated the Costume Institute's 2012 exhibition Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.

Photo: Linda Evangelista leaving Manhattan Family Court on Tuesday.

Francois Henri Pinault and Linda Evangelista both took the stand in a child support hearing on Friday, the second of four days in court that will determine whether Pinault will have to pay child support for their 5-year-old son Augustin.

After being asked why he provided financially for his 5-year-old daughter Valentina (whose mother is Pinault's wife, actress Salma Hayek), but did not extend the same courtesy to Augustin, Pinault told the court that he offered to pay Evangelista child support in 2007. Evangelista didn't respond until 2010.

"The way I work is that I make an offer and if someone doesn’t respond, I think the answer is no," he said during the testimony. "That no money was needed for the care of Augie. That was my understanding."

When Evangelista took the stand, her lawyer William Beslow asked her to recount her childhood picking cherries for "50 cents a basket" in Canada, and how little she was paid after she was discovered as a model. He also asked her about the kind of work she does now.

"In 2010 I was asked to walk in Jean-Paul Gaultier's final show for Hermés in Paris," Evangelista said. "It would have paid close to $100,000," she said, adding that she had to turn down the job because she had an early court date concerning the current child support proceedings. The court date was cancelled the evening before Evangelista was set to meet with the judge, and by that time it was too late for her to get back on the Gaultier runway.

"I couldn’t magic myself to Paris," she said.

Evangelista revealed that Pinault was Augustin's father late last year and was rumored to be asking for $46,000 a month in child support. Beslow shot that notion down on Thursday, saying that figure was part of a PR campaign by Pinault's lawyers.

Evangelista's testimony will continue Monday.

Photo: Linda Evangelista leaving Manhattan Family Court on Thursday.

>> Linda Evangelista, 45, and billionaire Hard Rock founder Peter Morton, 64, who began dating in late 2006 when Evangelista was pregnant, split at the end of the summer after a series of disagreements, Page Six reports.