Valentino vs Mario Valentino: One Name, Two Companies
Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, the two are unrelated, 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 house founded 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 article sets out who each company is, what that contract requires, what the recent litigation covered and how it ended, and how a shopper can work out in 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. Take it in once and you will not 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, control passed to Mayhoola for Investments in 2012 for around 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, showed a final couture collection in January 2008 and died on 19 January 2026, aged 93, so none of the current bag collection is his design. Mario Valentino S.p.A. is a different business altogether, founded in Naples in 1952 by a man of that name, and still based there, and it operates as 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 https://vlntn.net/shoulder-bags/ moccasin are self-description rather than verified fact.
How the 1979 agreement split the name
A coexistence agreement signed in 1979 set out which marks each side could put 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, provided that the full name appears inside the item and on its packaging. The same agreement bars that 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, and that senior-rights point is corroborated in legal reporting.
Why one company is obliged to write 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, together with 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 that wording doubles as an internal naming convention: Valentino Garavani is used for accessories while Valentino and Maison Valentino cover ready-to-wear. That is a single company applying one set of standards, not a lower tier and a higher one. The practical consequence is the most useful fact in the whole subject: a bag from the couture house carries 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. 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 suggests that more than ten proceedings, arbitrations among them, remained live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The action pleaded the following claims:
- False advertising and unfair competition.
- Alleged 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.
Reporting places the escalation of the dispute from 2017 onward, when handbag advertising began foregrounding the word VALENTINO on its own. Since the case settled, nothing in it 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. The outcome of that case is not verified here and should not be reported as resolved in either direction. The naming problem does not stop at the two companies: it extends to resale platforms, marketplace listings and anyone who describes a bag in a single word. For a buyer, the lesson is simple: a listing title 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. 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, which is 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 case involves any impropriety: these are two 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.
| What is being compared | Valentino S.p.A. | Mario Valentino S.p.A. |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | Rome, in 1960 | 1952, Naples |
| 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 |
| Typical retail channels | Own boutiques; Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
Separating the two in thirty seconds
Start inside the bag rather than on the exterior. 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 not always: older pieces may carry none, and its absence on its own 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 works in both directions: a genuine Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist and still be completely authentic, so work out which company made the bag before asking whether it is real.
What this means for shopping
Neither company is the 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, 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 exactly the ground 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. Ask for those photographs and a decades-old tangle collapses into a two-second check.