Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Separate Companies, One Shared Name
The word Valentino appears on handbags from two different Italian companies, they are not connected, and the resulting confusion is old enough to have produced its own case law. The first is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the other is a Naples leather goods and footwear business founded in 1952. Each of them is legitimate, both hold documented rights to the name in their own way, and the line between them was drawn by a private contract in 1979, not by a judge. This piece explains who each company is, what that contract requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it concluded, and how anyone shopping can tell in seconds which company made a particular bag. What follows is a trademark story rather than an accusation aimed at either side, and nothing below should be taken as a finding of wrongdoing. Read it once and no listing will fool you again.
Two names, two cities, two businesses
Valentino S.p.A. is the Roman house founded in 1960 by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, with its first atelier on Via Condotti. Ownership no longer has anything to do with the founder: he sold the business 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 himself retired from design in 2007, presented his last 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 an entirely separate company, founded in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name and still headquartered there, and it is a leather goods and valentino mini footwear house, not 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 established which marks each side could apply to which goods, and it is still the document everything else refers back to. 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 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. 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.
The reason one company must add 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, and in light of the senior US rights position on handbags, Valentino S.p.A. does not sell its leather goods under the single word Valentino. It is the addition of GARAVANI that keeps the mark distinct, which is why VALENTINO GARAVANI appears in capitals on the tag and in the advertising for bags. Inside the Roman house that wording doubles as an internal 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. In practical terms, this yields the single most useful fact in the whole subject: a bag from the couture house carries 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. 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 ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The claims pleaded in that action were:
- Unfair competition and false advertising.
- Breach of the terms of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags alleged to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- A claim of unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
The dispute is reported to have escalated from 2017 onward, at the point where handbag advertising began pushing the word VALENTINO by itself. Since the case settled, nothing in it was tested to judgment, and no finding of wrongdoing was entered against either side.
A separate case, filed in 2022
A separate action pointed the other way and drew in a third party. 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 around 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 unverified here and should not be described 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 that a listing title is the least reliable part of any resale page.
Where each brand actually appears
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 bags on the shelves of American off-price chains come from the Naples company, as those retailers’ own brand filter pages confirm. Which is why a Valentino bag sale at an off-price chain is very rarely what someone searching for the couture house has in mind. Nothing improper is involved on either side: both are simply 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, with Rebag’s data putting average resale retention for the house near 41 per cent.
| Point compared | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | Rome, in 1960 | Naples, in 1952 |
| Bag branding | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| What the inside says | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on packaging |
| Typical retail channels | 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
Begin 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, 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, though it is not universal, older pieces may have none, and an absent number by itself proves nothing. Date codes are not part of how these bags are marked, meaning any guide offering 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. The trap works in both directions: a real Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist while being completely authentic, so work out which company made the bag before asking whether it is real.
What it all means when you buy
Neither one is a counterfeit here, 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 check the tag before you look at the price. If the Naples company’s leather goods suit you, buy them knowingly 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, which is exactly the ground the 2022 case covered. 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.
