Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Different Companies Sharing a Single Name
Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, there is no relationship between them, and the confusion has persisted long enough to generate its own case law. The first is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear company founded in Naples in 1952. Both are entirely legitimate, both have documented rights to the name in their own way, and it was a private contract in 1979, rather than a judge, that drew the line between them. This article sets out who each company is, what that agreement requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it concluded, and how a shopper can work out in seconds which company made a given 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 this once and listings stop being confusing.
Two houses, two cities, two separate 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: he sold the company in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 for roughly 700 million euros, and in July 2023 Kering acquired thirty per cent, with the stated intention of buying the company outright by 2028. Valentino Garavani himself stepped back from design in 2007, showed his final 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 a different 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. The company 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.
How the 1979 agreement split the name
A coexistence agreement signed in 1979 established which marks each side could apply to which goods, and it remains the document everything else refers back to. Under its terms, Mario Valentino may use Mario Valentino, valentino flap bag M. Valentino, Valentino, MV or V on the exterior, provided 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 point is corroborated in legal reporting.
Why one company is obliged to write GARAVANI
The surname on the interior tag of a Roman-house bag is a contractual obligation, not a styling choice. Because of 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 distinct, 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: accessories carry Valentino Garavani, and ready-to-wear falls under Valentino and Maison Valentino. That is a single 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.
The lawsuit filed in 2019, and its ending
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. The counterclaims brought by Mario Valentino were dismissed in April 2021. On 14 June 2024 the case itself was settled and dismissed without prejudice, and the terms were never disclosed. The words without prejudice matter here, because either side is still free to bring the matter back. Reporting also suggests that more than ten proceedings, arbitrations among them, remained live in Italy, meaning the 2024 dismissal wrapped up a single American case rather than the entire disagreement. The claims pleaded in that action were:
- Unfair competition and false advertising.
- A claimed breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags claimed to imitate the couture house’s designs.
- Use of the V mark on leather goods, said to be unauthorised.
The disagreement is reported to have escalated 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 second case, brought 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 roughly 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
Different channels carry the two companies, which settles a good deal of the confusion. The Roman house sells through its own webstore and boutiques, plus 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, though how deep the discounting goes 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, which is verifiable from those retailers’ own brand filter pages. 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: these are two separate 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.
| Comparison point | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founded in | Rome, 1960 | Naples, in 1952 |
| Name used on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside the item and on the packaging |
| Usual channels | Own boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price chains: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
Thirty seconds to tell them apart
Start with the inside of the bag, not the outside. 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 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. Date codes are not part of how these bags are marked, so any guide promising 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. That trap cuts both ways: a genuine Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist and still be completely authentic, so establish which company made a bag before asking whether it is real.
What this means for shopping
Neither company is the counterfeit here, and treating this as fake versus real misses what is actually going on. If the Roman house is what you want, search for Valentino Garavani instead of Valentino alone, 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, not a compromised 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. Any pre-owned Valentino bag described only as Valentino calls for clear photographs of the interior tag before money changes hands. Ask for those photographs, and a decades-old tangle turns into a two-second check.