Valentino vs Mario Valentino: One Name, Two Companies
Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, they are not connected, and the resulting confusion is old enough to have produced its own case law. One of them is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the other is a Naples leather goods and footwear house 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. What follows sets out who each company is, what that contract requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it ended, 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 none of it should be read as a finding of wrongdoing. Read it once and you will never misread a listing again.
Two names, two cities, two 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 business in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 for around 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 retired from design work 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, set up in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name and headquartered there to this day, and it operates as a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. Its bags are sold as Valentino by Mario Valentino, though its claims to have invented the stiletto valentino raffia bag 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 remains the document everything else refers back to. Under its terms, Mario Valentino may use Mario Valentino, 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. 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.
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 because 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 distinguishable, 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. This is one company with one set of standards, not a cheaper line and a dearer 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 lawsuit filed in 2019, and its ending
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 was settled and dismissed without prejudice on 14 June 2024, with terms that were never disclosed. The words without prejudice matter here, because either side remains free to bring the matter back. Reporting also indicates that more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, remained live in Italy, meaning the 2024 dismissal wrapped up a single American case rather than the entire disagreement. The claims pleaded in the action were:
- False advertising and unfair competition.
- 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 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 second case, brought in 2022
A separate action pointed the other way and drew in 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 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 naming problem is not confined to the two companies: it extends to resale platforms, marketplace listings and everyone who describes a bag with one 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 turns up
Different channels carry the two companies, which removes a good deal 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, though how deep the discounting goes 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, something 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. 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, with Rebag’s data putting average resale retention for the house near 41 per cent.
| Point of comparison | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founding | Rome, 1960 | Naples, 1952 |
| Bag branding | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on the packaging |
| Typical channels | Own boutiques; Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
How to tell them apart in thirty seconds
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 on all four sides, the font weight consistent and the stamping evenly pressed. A serial number usually appears on a tag inside an interior pocket, but it is not universal, older pieces may carry none, and its absence alone proves nothing. There is no date-code system on these bags, so any guide that promises to decode a manufacturing date from the digits is describing something that does not exist. Exterior reading only Valentino, interior reading Mario Valentino: that is 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 the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
What this means when you shop
Neither one is a counterfeit here, and treating this as fake versus real misses what is actually going on. If you want the Roman house, search for Valentino Garavani rather than 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 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, precisely the territory covered by the 2022 case. 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 collapses into a two-second check.
