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 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 business founded in 1952. Each of them is legitimate, both hold 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. This article sets out who each company is, what that agreement requires, which ground the recent litigation covered and how it finished, 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. Read this once and listings stop being baffling.
Two cities, two houses, two companies
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 has nothing 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 Garavani himself retired from design in 2007, showed a final couture collection in January valentino small shoulder bag 2008 and died on 19 January 2026, aged 93, so none of the current bag collection is his design. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is a different company, founded 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 trades 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 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, provided the full name appears inside the item and on the 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. There is also a separate United States position: 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.
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. Given how the 1979 agreement allocated 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. Adding GARAVANI is what keeps the mark distinct, and that is why VALENTINO GARAVANI shows up in capitals on the tag and in bag advertising. Inside the Roman house the same wording doubles as a 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. The practical upshot is the most useful fact in the entire subject: the couture house’s bags say 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 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. 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. 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 claims set out in that action were:
- Alleged false advertising and unfair competition.
- Alleged breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags said to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- A claim of unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
Reporting places the escalation of the dispute from 2017 onward, when handbag advertising started putting the word VALENTINO forward on its own. Because the case settled, none of the claims 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. brought a claim 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. 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 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 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. The legitimate off-price outlet 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. Neither situation involves anything improper: these are two companies selling their own goods through their own distribution. Observed 2026 market prices for the couture house’s leather goods ran 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 |
Rome, 1960 |
Naples, in 1952 |
| Name on the bags |
Valentino Garavani |
Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior marking |
VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY |
Mario Valentino inside the item and on the packaging |
| Typical channels |
Its own boutiques, plus Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa and Farfetch |
Off-price chains, among them Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH and TJ Maxx |
Separating the two in thirty seconds
Look inside the bag rather than on the exterior. A couture-house bag has VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals on the interior tag, together 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. 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 the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
How to use this when you shop
Neither company is the counterfeit here, and casting 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 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, which is exactly the ground the 2022 case covered. 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 turns into a two-second check.
