Valentino vs Mario Valentino: Two Different Companies Sharing a Single Name
Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, there is no relationship between them, 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 entirely legitimate, each has documented rights to the name in its own way, and the boundary between them was drawn by a private contract in 1979 rather than by a judge. This article sets out 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. This is a trademark story, not 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 separate 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 has nothing to do with the founder: the founder sold the business in 1998, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 valentino roman stud mini for roughly 700 million euros, and Kering took thirty per cent in July 2023, planning to buy the company outright by 2028. Valentino Garavani retired from design work in 2007, showed his final 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. The company trades 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 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 reference point for everything that followed. Under it, Mario Valentino may use Mario Valentino, M. Valentino, Valentino, MV or V on the exterior, on condition that the full name appears inside the item and on its 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 states it has held the American trademark Valentino for handbags and leather goods since 26 April 1971, and legal reporting corroborates that senior-rights point.
The reason one company must add GARAVANI
On a Roman-house bag, the surname on the interior tag is there by contract, not by design preference. 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 sell its leather goods under the single word Valentino. It is the addition of GARAVANI that keeps the mark distinct, which is why VALENTINO GARAVANI appears in capitals on the tag and in the advertising for bags. Within the Roman house the same wording also works as a naming convention: Valentino Garavani covers accessories, while Valentino and Maison Valentino are used for 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, 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 settled and was dismissed without prejudice on 14 June 2024, on terms that 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 closed one American case rather than the whole dispute. The claims pleaded in that action were:
- Unfair competition and false advertising.
- Alleged 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, at the point where handbag advertising began pushing the word VALENTINO by itself. Because the case settled, none of it was tested to judgment, and there was no finding of wrongdoing against either company.
The second case, filed in 2022
A separate action pointed the other way and drew in a third party. Mario Valentino S.p.A. filed suit against Fashionphile Group LLC in the Southern District of New York in October 2022, under docket 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 naming problem is not confined 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
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 Naples company’s bags are the ones 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: 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 carried on bags | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| Interior marking | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on the packaging |
| Typical retail channels | Its own boutiques, plus Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa and Farfetch | Off-price chains: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
Separating the two in thirty seconds
Start inside the bag rather than outside it. The interior tag of a couture-house bag carries VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals along with MADE IN ITALY, sewn 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, but not always: older pieces may carry none, and its absence on its own proves nothing. These bags carry no date-code system at all, meaning any guide offering 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 runs both ways: an authentic Mario Valentino bag fails a Garavani checklist despite being entirely genuine, so settle 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 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, which 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, precisely the territory covered by the 2022 case. Any pre-owned Valentino bag described only as Valentino calls for clear photographs of the interior tag before money changes hands. Ask for those photographs, and a decades-old tangle turns into a two-second check.