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. The first is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear business founded in Naples in 1952. Both are 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. What follows sets out 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 nothing below should be taken as a finding of wrongdoing. Read it once and you will never misread a listing again.
Two houses, 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 company in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 for around 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 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 valintinobags.com/shoulder-bags 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, not 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.
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 remains the reference point for everything that followed. 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. 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 says it has held the American trademark Valentino for handbags and leather goods since 26 April 1971, a senior-rights point corroborated in legal reporting.
Why one company must write GARAVANI
On a Roman-house bag, the surname on the interior tag is there by contract, not by design preference. Given how the 1979 agreement allocated the marks, together with 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 distinguishable, 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: 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. In practical terms, this yields the single most useful fact in the whole 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.
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. 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 is still free to bring the matter back. According to reporting, more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, were still live in Italy, meaning the 2024 dismissal wrapped up a single American case rather than the entire disagreement. The claims pleaded in that action were:
- Alleged false advertising and unfair competition.
- A claimed breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags alleged to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
- Alleged unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.
The disagreement 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 it was tested to judgment, and there was no finding of wrongdoing against either company.
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. According to the complaint, approximately 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 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 appears
The two companies reach shoppers through different channels, and that alone clears up much 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, although the depth of the reductions there cannot be stated 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. 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 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.
| Comparison point | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Rome, in 1960 | Naples, in 1952 |
| Name on the bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Marking inside | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on packaging |
| Typical channels | Own boutiques; Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price chains, among them Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH and TJ Maxx |
How to tell 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 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. 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 exterior reads only Valentino and the interior says Mario Valentino, you are holding a genuine Naples-made bag from the other company. The trap works in both directions: a real Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist while being completely authentic, so establish which company made the bag before you ask whether it is genuine.
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 check the tag before you look at the price. If 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. 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.