Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Separate Companies, One Shared Name
Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, they are not connected, and the resulting confusion is old enough to have produced its own case law. One is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear business founded in Naples in 1952. Each of them is legitimate, both have 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 anyone shopping can tell in seconds which company made a particular bag. It is a trademark story rather than an accusation against 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: the founder sold the business in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 for roughly 700 million euros, and Kering took thirty per cent in July 2023, planning to buy the company outright by 2028. Valentino Garavani retired from design work in 2007, presented his last couture collection in January 2008 and died on 19 January 2026 at the age of 93, so none of the current bag collection is his design. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is a different business altogether, set up in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name and headquartered there still, and it is a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. It sells as Valentino by Mario Valentino, and its claims valentino leather tote to have invented the stiletto heel and the women’s moccasin are self-description rather than verified history.
The 1979 contract that carved up 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. The agreement also stops that company from combining V and Valentino on leather goods. Running the other way, Valentino S.p.A. is contractually obliged to use GARAVANI in addition to VALENTINO on its leather goods and in the advertising for them. There is a distinct United States angle as well: Mario Valentino states it has held the American trademark Valentino for handbags and leather goods since 26 April 1971, a senior-rights point corroborated in legal reporting.
Why one company is obliged to write GARAVANI
The surname on the interior tag of a bag from the Roman house is a contractual obligation rather than a styling choice. On account of the way the 1979 agreement divided the marks, together with the senior US rights position on handbags, Valentino S.p.A. does not present its leather goods under the single word Valentino. 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 the same wording doubles as a naming convention: Valentino Garavani covers accessories, while Valentino and Maison Valentino are used for ready-to-wear. That is one company applying one set of standards, not a lower tier and a higher one. The practical consequence is the most useful fact in the whole subject: a bag from the couture house says GARAVANI, while a bag marked only Valentino on the outside with Mario Valentino inside is a genuine Mario Valentino, a separate company at a different price point.
The 2019 lawsuit, and how it ended
In July 2019 Valentino S.p.A. brought suit against Mario Valentino in the US District Court for the Central District of California, docketed 2:19-cv-6306. In April 2021 Mario Valentino’s counterclaims were dismissed. 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 remains free to bring the matter back. Reporting also indicates that more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal closed one American case rather than the whole dispute. The claims pleaded in that action were:
- Claims of false advertising and unfair competition.
- Alleged breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags claimed to imitate the couture house’s designs.
- Unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
Reporting places the escalation of the dispute from 2017 onward, when handbag advertising began foregrounding the word VALENTINO on its own. Since the case settled, nothing in it was tested to judgment, and there was no finding of wrongdoing against either company.
A separate case, filed in 2022
Another action ran in the opposite direction, with a third party caught up in it. Mario Valentino S.p.A. filed suit against Fashionphile Group LLC in the Southern District of New York in October 2022, under docket 1:22-cv-08984. The complaint alleged that roughly 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 confusion over the name is not limited to the two companies: it extends to resale platforms, marketplace listings and anyone who describes a bag in a single word. The lesson for a buyer is that the title of a listing is the least reliable part of any resale page.
Which shelves each brand actually reaches
The two companies reach shoppers through different channels, which resolves much of the confusion. The Roman house sells directly through its own webstore and boutiques and through a defined set of authorised retailers including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter, Farfetch, Selfridges, Harrods and Tessabit. The legitimate off-price outlet is THE OUTNET, the off-price arm of Net-a-Porter, although the depth of the reductions there cannot be stated with confidence. It is the Naples company’s bags that appear on the shelves of American off-price chains, as those retailers’ own brand filter pages confirm. That is why a Valentino bag sale at an off-price chain is very rarely what a shopper searching for the couture house has in mind. Neither situation involves anything improper: these are two separate companies selling their own goods through their own distribution. The couture house’s leather goods were observed in 2026 at market prices 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 of comparison | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founded in | Rome, in 1960 | Naples, 1952 |
| Name used on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior tag marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on packaging |
| Usual channels | Own boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
How to tell them apart in thirty seconds
Look inside the bag rather than on the exterior. The interior tag of a couture-house bag carries VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals along with MADE IN ITALY, stitched down on all four sides, with consistent font weight and evenly pressed stamping. A serial number is usually found on a tag inside an interior pocket, though it is not universal, older pieces may have none, and an absent number by itself proves nothing. These bags carry no date-code system at all, so any guide that promises to decode a manufacturing date from the digits is describing something that does not exist. If the exterior reads only Valentino and the interior says Mario Valentino, you are holding a genuine Naples-made bag from the other company. The trap runs both ways: a real Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist while being completely authentic, so settle which company made the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
What this means for shopping
Neither company is the counterfeit here, and framing this as fake against real misses what is happening. If you want the Roman house, search for Valentino Garavani rather than Valentino alone, and check the tag before you look at the price. If the Naples company’s leather goods suit you, buy them with your eyes open and enjoy the lower price, which 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. A pre-owned Valentino bag listed only as Valentino needs clear photographs of the interior tag before any money changes hands. Ask for those photographs and a decades-old tangle collapses into a two-second check.