Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Different Companies Sharing a Single Name
Two separate Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, they are not related, and the confusion is old enough to have generated its own case law. One is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the other is a Naples leather goods and footwear house founded in 1952. Both are entirely legitimate, both hold documented rights to the name in their own way, and it was a private contract in 1979, rather than a judge, that drew the boundary between them. What follows sets out who each company is, what the agreement requires of each side, which ground the recent litigation covered and how it finished, 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 taken as a finding of wrongdoing. Read it once and you will never misread a listing again.
Two houses, 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 no longer has anything to do with the founder: he sold the company in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control 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 Garavani retired valentino shopping bag from design work in 2007, showed his final couture collection in January 2008 and died on 19 January 2026 at the age of 93, meaning nothing in the present bag collection came from his hand. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is a different business altogether, founded in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name, and still based there, and it operates as a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. Its bags are sold 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 agreement that split the name
A coexistence agreement signed in 1979 established which marks each side could apply to which goods, and it remains the reference point for everything that followed. 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 the packaging. That same agreement prevents the company from using V and Valentino together on leather goods. Running in the other direction, Valentino S.p.A. is contractually required 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 states 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
On a Roman-house bag, the surname on the interior tag is there by contract, not by design preference. Given how the 1979 agreement allocated the marks, and given the senior US rights position on handbags, Valentino S.p.A. does not sell its leather goods under the single word Valentino. Adding GARAVANI is what keeps the mark distinguishable, which is why the tag and the advertising for bags carry VALENTINO GARAVANI in capitals. Inside the Roman house that wording doubles as an internal naming convention: Valentino Garavani is used for accessories while Valentino and Maison Valentino cover 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, 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. sued 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 suggests that more than ten proceedings, arbitrations among them, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The action pleaded the following claims:
- Claims of false advertising and unfair competition.
- Breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags alleged to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- Unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
The dispute is reported to have escalated from 2017 onward, when handbag advertising began foregrounding the word VALENTINO on its own. Because the case settled, none of it was tested to judgment, and neither company was the subject of any finding of wrongdoing.
A second case, filed in 2022
Another action ran in the opposite direction, with a third party caught up in it. In October 2022 Mario Valentino S.p.A. brought a claim against Fashionphile Group LLC in the Southern District of New York, docketed 1:22-cv-08984. According to the complaint, approximately four hundred handbags had been listed on the resale platform as VALENTINO when they were in fact goods of Valentino S.p.A. The outcome of that case is not verified here and should not be reported as resolved 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. For a buyer, the lesson is simple: a listing title is the least reliable part of any resale page.
Where each of them is actually sold
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 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. The Naples company’s bags are the ones that appear on the shelves of American off-price chains, something 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. Nothing improper is involved on either side: these are two companies selling their own goods through their own distribution. In 2026 the couture house’s leather goods were observed at market prices running 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 | 1960, Rome | 1952, Naples |
| Name carried on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on packaging |
| Where it is usually sold | Own boutiques; Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price chains, among them Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH and TJ Maxx |
Telling them apart in thirty seconds
Start inside the bag rather than outside it. The interior tag of a couture-house bag carries VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals along with MADE IN ITALY, sewn on all four sides, the font weight consistent and the stamping evenly pressed. A serial number is usually found on a tag inside an interior pocket, but not always: older pieces may carry none, and its absence on its own proves nothing. Date codes are not part of how these bags are marked, 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 determine which company made the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
What this means when you shop
Neither one is a counterfeit here, and posing it as fake against real misses the point entirely. If the Roman house is what you want, search for Valentino Garavani instead of Valentino alone, and read the tag before you read the price. If 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. Where it goes wrong is in resale listings and third-party marketplaces that describe both with one word, precisely the territory covered by the 2022 case. A pre-owned Valentino bag described 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.