Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Companies, One Name
The word Valentino appears on handbags from two different Italian companies, there is no relationship between them, and the confusion is old enough to have generated its own case law. The first is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear business founded in Naples in 1952. Each of them is legitimate, both have documented rights to the name in their 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 contract requires, which ground the recent litigation covered and how it finished, and how anyone shopping can tell in seconds which company made a particular bag. This is a trademark story, not an accusation against either side, and nothing below should be taken as a finding of wrongdoing. Take it in once and you will not misread a listing again.
Two cities, two houses, two companies
Valentino S.p.A. is the Roman house that Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti founded in 1960, its first atelier on Via Condotti. Ownership has nothing to do with the founder: he sold the company in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 for roughly 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 his final couture collection valentino loco bag 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 ever since, 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 rather than verified fact.
How the 1979 agreement split the name
Signed in 1979, a coexistence agreement laid down which marks each side could use on which goods, and it remains the document everything else refers back to. Under it, 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. 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 a distinct United States angle as well: Mario Valentino’s stated position is that it has held the American trademark Valentino for handbags and leather goods since 26 April 1971, a senior-rights point 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. On account of the way the 1979 agreement divided the marks, and given the senior US rights position on handbags, Valentino S.p.A. does not present 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 the same wording doubles as a 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: the couture house’s bags say 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.
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. 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 stays free to bring the matter back. Reporting also indicates that more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal closed one American case rather than the whole dispute. The claims set out in that action were:
- Alleged false advertising and unfair competition.
- A claimed breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags claimed to imitate the couture house’s designs.
- Alleged unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
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 no finding of wrongdoing was entered against either side.
A second case, filed in 2022
Another action ran in the opposite direction, with a third party caught up in it. 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 unverified here and should not be described 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
Different channels carry the two companies, which settles a good deal of the confusion. The Roman house sells through its own webstore and boutiques, plus 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 one 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. The bags on the shelves of American off-price chains come from the Naples company, something verifiable from those retailers’ own brand filter pages. 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 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, 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 | 1960, Rome | Naples, 1952 |
| Name used on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Marking inside | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside the item and on the packaging |
| Usual channels | Own boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price chains, among them Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH and TJ Maxx |
Telling them apart in thirty seconds
Look inside the bag first, not outside. A couture-house bag has VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals on the interior tag, together with MADE IN ITALY, stitched down on all four sides, with consistent font weight and evenly pressed stamping. A serial number is usually found 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. 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 work out which company made the bag before asking whether it is real.
How to use this when you shop
Neither company is the counterfeit here, 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 you read the price. If the Naples company’s leather goods suit you, buy them with your eyes open and enjoy the lower price, a price that reflects a different business, not a compromised 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. 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.