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 of them is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear firm founded in Naples in 1952. Both are entirely 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. This piece explains who each company is, what that contract 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 read as a finding of wrongdoing. Read it once and you will never misread a listing again.
Two houses, two cities, two separate 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 has nothing 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 acquired thirty per cent in July 2023, intending to buy the company outright by 2028. Valentino Garavani retired from design work in 2007, presented his last couture collection in January 2008 and died on 19 January 2026 at the age valentino mini bag 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 headquartered there, and it is 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 fact.
The 1979 agreement that divided 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 agreement also prevents that company from combining V and Valentino 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 says 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. Given how the 1979 agreement allocated the marks, and given 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 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: 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: a bag from the couture house says GARAVANI, and a bag reading only Valentino outside with Mario Valentino inside is a genuine Mario Valentino, a different 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. 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 ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The claims pleaded in the action were:
- Unfair competition and false advertising.
- Breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags said to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- Use of the V mark on leather goods, said to be unauthorised.
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 there was no finding of wrongdoing against either company.
The 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. filed suit 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 naming problem does not stop at 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.
Which shelves each brand actually reaches
The two companies reach shoppers through different channels, and that alone clears up much of the confusion. Sales for the Roman house run through its own webstore and boutiques and through a defined list 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. It is the Naples company’s bags that appear on the shelves of American off-price chains, which is 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. Neither situation involves anything improper: 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, while Rebag’s data places the house’s average resale retention near 41 per cent.
| What is being compared | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founded in | Rome, 1960 | Naples, 1952 |
| Name used on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior tag marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on packaging |
| Usual channels | Its own boutiques, plus Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa and Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
How to tell them apart in thirty seconds
Look inside the bag rather than on the exterior. On a couture-house bag the interior tag 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. There is usually a serial number on a tag inside an interior pocket, but not always: older pieces may carry none, and its absence on its own proves nothing. There is no date-code system on these bags, 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: an authentic Mario Valentino bag fails a Garavani checklist despite being entirely genuine, so establish which company made a bag before asking whether it is real.
What this means for shopping
Neither of these companies is the counterfeit, 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 with your eyes open 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, 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.