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Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Separate Companies, One Shared Name

Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, there is no relationship between them, 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. Both are 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 the agreement requires of each side, what the recent litigation covered and how it ended, 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 none of it should be read as a finding of wrongdoing. Take it in once and you will not misread a listing 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 roughly 700 million euros, and Kering acquired thirty per cent in July 2023, intending 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 none of the current bag collection is his design. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is a different business altogether, set up in Naples designer tote bags in 1952 by a man of that name and headquartered there to this day, and it is 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 divided the name

A coexistence agreement signed in 1979 established which marks each side could apply to 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, provided that the full name appears inside the item and on its 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. There is also a separate United States position: Mario Valentino says 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.

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 given 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: Valentino Garavani covers accessories, while Valentino and Maison Valentino are used for ready-to-wear. That is one 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: a bag from the couture house says 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 2019 lawsuit, and how it ended

Valentino S.p.A. sued Mario Valentino in July 2019 in the US District Court for the Central District of California, under docket 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. Dismissal without prejudice matters, since it leaves either side free to raise the matter again. Reporting also indicates that more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The claims pleaded in that action were:

1. False advertising and unfair competition.
2. Alleged breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
3. Handbags said to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
4. 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 started putting the word VALENTINO forward on its own. Because the case settled, none of the claims was tested to judgment, and neither company was the subject of any finding of wrongdoing.

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 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 extends to resale platforms, marketplace listings and anyone who describes a bag in 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, which resolves 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 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. Neither case involves any impropriety: both are simply 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, while Rebag’s data places the house’s average resale retention near 41 per cent.

Telling them apart in thirty seconds

Look inside the bag first, not outside. 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. A serial number usually appears on a tag inside an interior pocket, but not always: older pieces may carry none, and its absence on its own proves nothing. Date codes are not part of how these bags are marked, so any guide that promises 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 runs 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 one is a counterfeit here, and framing this as fake against real misses what is happening. Want the Roman house? Search Valentino Garavani rather than Valentino on its own, and read the tag before the price. Should 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, which is precisely the territory the 2022 case covered. Any pre-owned Valentino bag described only as Valentino calls for clear photographs of the interior tag before money changes hands. Ask for them, and a decades-old tangle reduces to a two-second check.