Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Separate Companies, One Shared Name
Two separate Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, they are not related, and the confusion has persisted long enough to generate its own case law. One of them is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the other is a Naples leather goods and footwear business founded in 1952. Both are legitimate, both hold documented rights to the name in their own way, and the boundary between them was drawn by a private contract in 1979 rather than by a judge. This piece explains who each company is, what the agreement requires of each side, what the recent litigation covered and how it concluded, and how a shopper can work out in seconds which company made a given bag. What follows is a trademark story rather than an accusation aimed at either side, and nothing below should be read as a finding of wrongdoing. Read it once and no listing will fool you again.
Two names, two cities, two businesses
Founded in 1960 by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, with a first atelier on Via Condotti, Valentino S.p.A. is the Roman house. Ownership has nothing to do with the founder: he sold the business in 1998, control passed to Mayhoola for Investments in 2012 for around 700 million euros, and in July 2023 Kering acquired thirty per cent, with the stated intention of buying the company outright by 2028. valentino vlogo tote Valentino Garavani retired from design work in 2007, showed his final couture collection in January 2008 and died on 19 January 2026 at the age of 93, so nothing in the current bag collection was designed by him. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is a different company, set up in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name and headquartered there ever since, and it operates as a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. The company trades as Valentino by Mario Valentino, though its claims to have invented the stiletto heel and the women’s moccasin are self-description rather than verified history.
How the 1979 agreement split the name
Signed in 1979, a coexistence agreement laid down which marks each side could use on which goods, and it remains the document everything else refers back to. Under it, Mario Valentino may use Mario Valentino, M. Valentino, Valentino, MV or V on the exterior, provided the full name appears inside the item and on the packaging. That same agreement prevents the company from using V and Valentino together on leather goods. In the opposite direction, the contract requires Valentino S.p.A. to use GARAVANI in addition to VALENTINO on its leather goods and in the advertising for them. A separate United States position also applies: Mario Valentino’s stated position is that it has held the American trademark Valentino for handbags and leather goods since 26 April 1971, and that senior-rights claim is corroborated in legal reporting.
Why one company is obliged to write GARAVANI
The surname on the interior tag of a Roman-house bag is a contractual obligation, not a styling choice. Because of how the 1979 agreement allocated the marks, and because of the senior US rights position on handbags, Valentino S.p.A. never presents its leather goods under the word Valentino alone. Adding GARAVANI is what keeps the mark distinct, and that is why VALENTINO GARAVANI shows up in capitals on the tag and in bag advertising. Inside the Roman house that wording doubles as an internal naming convention: Valentino Garavani covers accessories, while Valentino and Maison Valentino are used for ready-to-wear. This is one company with one set of standards, not a cheaper line and a dearer one. The practical consequence is the most useful fact in the whole subject: the couture house’s bags say GARAVANI, and a bag that reads only Valentino outside and Mario Valentino inside is a genuine Mario Valentino, a different company selling at a different price point.
The lawsuit filed in 2019, and its ending
In July 2019 Valentino S.p.A. sued Mario Valentino in the US District Court for the Central District of California, docketed 2:19-cv-6306. Mario Valentino’s counterclaims were dismissed in April 2021. The case itself settled and was dismissed without prejudice on 14 June 2024, on terms that were never disclosed. The words without prejudice matter here, because either side stays free to bring the matter back. Reporting also suggests that more than ten proceedings, arbitrations among them, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal closed one American case rather than the whole dispute. The action pleaded the following claims:
- Unfair competition and false advertising.
- A claimed breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags said to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- Unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
Reporting places the escalation of the dispute from 2017 onward, at the point where handbag advertising began pushing the word VALENTINO by itself. Because the case settled, none of the claims was tested to judgment, and neither company was the subject of any finding of wrongdoing.
The second case, filed in 2022
Another action ran in the opposite direction, with a third party involved. In October 2022 Mario Valentino S.p.A. filed suit against Fashionphile Group LLC in the Southern District of New York, docketed 1:22-cv-08984. The complaint alleged that around four hundred handbags had been listed on the resale platform as VALENTINO when they were in fact goods of Valentino S.p.A. That case’s outcome is not verified here, and it should not be reported as settled in either direction. The naming problem is not confined to the two companies: it extends to resale platforms, marketplace listings and everyone who describes a bag with one word. The lesson for a buyer is that the title of a listing is the least reliable part of any resale page.
Where each brand actually appears
Different channels carry the two companies, which clears up a good deal of the confusion. Sales for the Roman house run through its own webstore and boutiques and through a defined list of authorised retailers including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter, Farfetch, Selfridges, Harrods and Tessabit. Its legitimate off-price channel is THE OUTNET, the off-price arm of Net-a-Porter, though the depth of discount there is not something to state with confidence. The Naples company’s bags are the ones that appear on the shelves of American off-price chains, which is verifiable from those retailers’ own brand filter pages. That is why a Valentino bag sale at an off-price chain is seldom what a shopper looking for the couture house actually means. Neither case involves any impropriety: both are simply companies selling their own goods through their own distribution. Observed 2026 market prices for the couture house’s leather goods ran from about $650 for a VLogo Signature clutch in grainy calfskin to $7,900 for an embroidered Panthea, all made in Italy, while Rebag’s data places the house’s average resale retention near 41 per cent.
| Point compared | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | Rome, in 1960 | 1952, Naples |
| Bag branding | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior tag marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on packaging |
| Where it is usually sold | Its own boutiques, plus Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa and Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
Separating the two in thirty seconds
Begin inside the bag rather than on the exterior. A couture-house bag has VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals on the interior tag, together with MADE IN ITALY, sewn down on all four sides, with consistent font weight and evenly pressed stamping. A serial number usually appears on a tag inside an interior pocket, but it is not universal, older pieces may carry none, and its absence alone proves nothing. There is no date-code system on these bags, so any guide that promises to decode a manufacturing date from the digits is describing something that does not exist. If the outside reads only Valentino while the inside says Mario Valentino, you have a genuine Naples-made bag from the other company. That trap cuts both ways: a genuine Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist and still be completely authentic, so work out which company made the bag before asking whether it is real.
What this means for shopping
Neither of these companies is the counterfeit, and framing this as fake against real misses what is happening. Want the Roman house? Search Valentino Garavani rather than Valentino on its own, and check the tag before you look at the price. Should the Naples company’s leather goods suit you, buy them knowingly and enjoy the lower price, a price that reflects a different business, not a compromised version of the same one. The harm occurs in resale listings and third-party marketplaces that use one word to describe both, precisely the territory covered by the 2022 case. Any pre-owned Valentino bag described only as Valentino calls for clear photographs of the interior tag before money changes hands. Request the photographs and a decades-old tangle shrinks to a two-second check.