Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Different Companies Sharing a Single Name
The word Valentino appears on handbags from two different Italian companies, they are not connected, 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 second is a leather goods and footwear company founded in Naples in 1952. Each of them is legitimate, each has documented rights to the name in its own way, and the boundary between them was drawn by a private contract in 1979 rather than by a judge. What follows sets out who each company is, what that contract requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it concluded, and how a shopper can tell within seconds which company made a given bag. It is a trademark story rather than an accusation against either side, and nothing below should be taken as a finding of wrongdoing. Take it in once and you will not misread a listing again.
Two cities, two houses, two companies
Valentino S.p.A. is the Roman house that Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti founded in 1960, its first atelier on Via Condotti. Ownership no longer has anything 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 Kering took thirty per cent in July 2023, planning to buy the company outright by 2028. valentino black tote Valentino Garavani himself retired from design in 2007, showed a final couture collection in January 2008 and died on 19 January 2026, aged 93, so nothing in the current bag collection was designed by him. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is an entirely separate company, founded in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name, and still based there, and it is a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. It sells as Valentino by Mario Valentino, and its claims 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
A coexistence agreement signed in 1979 set out which marks each side could put on which goods, and it remains the document everything else refers back to. Under its terms, Mario Valentino may use Mario Valentino, M. Valentino, Valentino, MV or V on the exterior, so long as the full name appears inside the item and on its 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. There is a distinct United States angle as well: 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 must write GARAVANI
The surname on the interior tag of a Roman-house bag is a contractual obligation, not a styling choice. Given how the 1979 agreement allocated the marks, and because of 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 distinguishable, and that is why VALENTINO GARAVANI shows up in capitals on the tag and in bag advertising. Within the Roman house the same wording also works as a naming convention: accessories carry Valentino Garavani, and ready-to-wear falls under Valentino and Maison Valentino. This is one company with one set of standards, not a cheaper line and a dearer one. The practical upshot is the most useful fact in the entire subject: a bag from the couture house says 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 2019 lawsuit, and how it concluded
Valentino S.p.A. sued Mario Valentino in July 2019 in the US District Court for the Central District of California, under docket 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. Dismissal without prejudice matters, since it leaves either side free to raise the matter again. Reporting also indicates that more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The claims pleaded in that action were:
- Claims of false advertising and unfair competition.
- Breach of the terms of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags alleged to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- Use of the V mark on leather goods, said to be unauthorised.
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 no finding of wrongdoing was made against either company.
A separate case, filed in 2022
A separate action pointed the other way and drew in a third party. 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 does not stop at 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.
Which shelves each brand actually reaches
The two companies reach shoppers through different channels, and that alone clears up 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. Its one legitimate off-price channel 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. Nothing improper is involved on either side: 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, and Rebag’s data puts the house’s average resale retention near 41 per cent.
| Point of comparison | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founding | Rome, 1960 | Naples, in 1952 |
| Bag branding | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Marking inside | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on the packaging |
| Usual channels | Own boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price chains, among them Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH and TJ Maxx |
How to tell them apart in thirty seconds
Look inside the bag first, not outside. 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, but it is not universal, older pieces may carry none, and its absence alone 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. Exterior reading only Valentino, interior reading Mario Valentino: that is a genuine Naples-made bag from the other company. The trap runs both ways: a genuine Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist and still be completely authentic, so settle which company made the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
What this means when you shop
Neither of these companies is the counterfeit, and casting it as fake against real misses the point entirely. If you want the Roman house, search for Valentino Garavani rather than Valentino alone, 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, which reflects a different business rather than a watered-down version of the same one. The damage happens in resale listings and third-party marketplaces that use a single word for 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 turns into a two-second check.