Valentino vs Mario Valentino: One Name, Two Companies
Two separate Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, they are not connected, and the confusion has lasted long enough to generate its own case law. One 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, 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. What follows sets out who each company is, what that contract requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it ended, 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 none of it should be read as a finding of wrongdoing. Take it in once and you will not misread a listing again.
Two houses, two cities, two businesses
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: the founder sold the business in 1998, control passed to Mayhoola for Investments in 2012 for around 700 million euros, and Kering acquired thirty per cent in July 2023, intending to buy the company outright by 2028. Valentino Garavani himself stepped back 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 valentino structured tote in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name and still headquartered there, and it operates as a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. The company operates 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.
The 1979 agreement that split the name
Signed in 1979, a coexistence agreement laid down which marks each side could use on which goods, and it remains the reference point for everything that followed. It permits Mario Valentino to 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. The same agreement bars that company from using V and Valentino together 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. 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 point is corroborated in legal reporting.
Why GARAVANI has to appear
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, and in light 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 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. That is one company applying one set of standards, not a lower tier and a higher one. In practical terms, this yields the single 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.
What the 2019 lawsuit covered, and how it finished
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. On 14 June 2024 the case itself was settled and dismissed without prejudice, and the terms were never disclosed. Dismissal without prejudice matters, because it leaves either side free to bring the matter back. According to reporting, more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, were still live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal closed one American case rather than the whole dispute. The action pleaded the following claims:
- Alleged false advertising and unfair competition.
- Breach 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, at the point where handbag advertising began pushing the word VALENTINO by itself. Because the case settled, none of it was tested to judgment, and there was no finding of wrongdoing against either company.
A second case, filed in 2022
A separate action ran in the opposite direction and involved a third party. 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. 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 reaches resale platforms, marketplace listings and anyone who describes a bag with a single 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 turns up
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, 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, something verifiable from those retailers’ own brand filter pages. 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, with Rebag’s data putting average resale retention for the house near 41 per cent.
| Comparison point | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founding | Rome, in 1960 | Naples, 1952 |
| Name used on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Marking inside | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside the item and on the packaging |
| Typical retail channels | Its own boutiques, plus Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa and Farfetch | Off-price chains: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
How to tell them apart in thirty seconds
Start inside the bag rather than outside it. A couture-house bag has VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals on the interior tag, together 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, 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 promising 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: an authentic Mario Valentino bag fails a Garavani checklist despite being entirely genuine, so settle which company made the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
How to use this when you shop
Neither of these companies is the counterfeit, and treating this as fake versus real misses what is actually going on. Want the Roman house? Search Valentino Garavani rather than Valentino on its own, and read the tag before 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. 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 described only as Valentino needs clear photographs of the interior tag before any money changes hands. Request the photographs and a decades-old tangle shrinks to a two-second check.