Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Separate Companies, One Shared Name
Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, they are not connected, and the confusion has run on long enough to generate its own case law. One is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear firm founded in Naples in 1952. Each of them is legitimate, each has documented rights to the name in its own way, and the line between them was drawn by a private contract in 1979, not by a judge. This piece explains who each company is, what that agreement requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it ended, and how a shopper can tell within seconds which company made a given bag. What follows is a trademark story rather than an accusation aimed at 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 cities, two houses, two companies
Founded in 1960 by Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, with a first atelier on Via Condotti, Valentino S.p.A. is the Roman house. 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 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 company, set up in Naples 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. It sells as Valentino by Mario Valentino, and its claims to have invented the stiletto heel and the women’s moccasin are self-description https://valintinobags.com/shoulder-bags/ rather than verified fact.
The 1979 agreement that split the name
Signed in 1979, a coexistence agreement laid down which marks each side could use on which goods, and it is still 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, so long as 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. In the opposite direction, the contract requires Valentino S.p.A. 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’s stated position is that it has held the American trademark Valentino for handbags and leather goods since 26 April 1971, and legal reporting corroborates that senior-rights point.
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. 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 distinguishable, and that is why VALENTINO GARAVANI shows up in capitals on the tag and in bag advertising. 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 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, 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.
What the 2019 lawsuit covered, and how it finished
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. The case itself was settled and dismissed without prejudice on 14 June 2024, with terms that 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 set out in that action were:
- Alleged false advertising and unfair competition.
- Alleged breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- An allegation that certain handbags were lookalikes of 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, at the point where handbag advertising began pushing the word VALENTINO by itself. Because the case settled, none of the claims was tested to judgment, and no finding of wrongdoing was made against either company.
A 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. 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. 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. For a buyer, the lesson is that 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 clears up a good deal 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, although the depth of the reductions there cannot be stated 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 very rarely what a shopper searching for the couture house has in mind. Neither situation involves anything improper: 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, and Rebag’s data puts the house’s average resale retention near 41 per cent.
| Point compared | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Rome, 1960 | Naples, 1952 |
| Name carried on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on the packaging |
| Where it is usually sold | Own boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
Telling 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 on all four sides, the font weight consistent and the stamping evenly pressed. 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. 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. Exterior reading only Valentino, interior reading Mario Valentino: that is a genuine Naples-made bag from the other company. That trap cuts both ways: a real Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist while being 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 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 read the tag before the price. Should the Naples company’s leather goods suit you, buy them knowingly and enjoy the lower price, a price that reflects a different business, not a compromised version of the same one. Where it goes wrong is in resale listings and third-party marketplaces that describe both with one word, which is precisely the territory 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. Request the photographs and a decades-old tangle shrinks to a two-second check.