Valentino vs Mario Valentino: One Name, Two Companies
The word Valentino appears on handbags from two different Italian companies, they are not connected, and the confusion is old enough to have generated its own case law. The first is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the other is a Naples leather goods and footwear house founded in 1952. Both are legitimate, both have documented rights to the name in their own way, and it was a private contract in 1979, rather than a judge, that drew the boundary between them. This article sets out who each company is, what that agreement requires, which ground the recent litigation covered and how it finished, 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 none of it should be read as a finding of wrongdoing. Take it in once and you will not misread a listing again.
Two names, two cities, two businesses
Valentino S.p.A. is the Roman house that Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti founded in 1960, its first atelier on Via Condotti. The ownership story has nothing to do with the founder: the founder sold the business 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 retired from design work 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 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 valentino raffia tote 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 its packaging. The agreement also stops that company from combining V and Valentino on leather goods. Running the other way, Valentino S.p.A. is contractually obliged 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 legal reporting corroborates that senior-rights point.
Why one company is obliged to 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, and given 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 distinct, 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. That is a single company applying one set of standards, not a lower tier and a higher one. In practical terms, this yields the single 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. sued Mario Valentino in the US District Court for the Central District of California, docketed 2:19-cv-6306. The counterclaims brought by Mario Valentino were dismissed in April 2021. The case itself was settled and dismissed without prejudice on 14 June 2024, with terms that were never disclosed. The words without prejudice matter here, because either side is still free to bring the matter back. 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:
- Alleged false advertising and unfair competition.
- Breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
- Handbags claimed to imitate 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 it was tested to judgment, and no finding of wrongdoing was made against either company.
A second case, brought 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. 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 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 turns up
The two companies reach shoppers through different channels, which resolves much 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. The bags on the shelves of American off-price chains come from the Naples company, as those retailers‘ own brand filter pages confirm. 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 case involves any impropriety: both are simply 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, 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. |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Rome, 1960 | Naples, in 1952 |
| Bag branding | Valentino Garavani | Valentino by Mario Valentino |
| What the inside says | VALENTINO, GARAVANI, MADE IN ITALY | Mario Valentino inside and on the packaging |
| Typical channels | Own boutiques, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Mytheresa, Farfetch | Off-price retail: Nordstrom Rack, Saks OFF 5TH, TJ Maxx |
Thirty seconds to tell them apart
Start with the inside of the bag, not the outside. The interior tag of a couture-house bag carries VALENTINO and GARAVANI in capitals along 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 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 outside reads only Valentino while the inside says Mario Valentino, you have a genuine Naples-made bag from the other company. The trap runs both ways: a real Mario Valentino bag will fail a Garavani checklist while being completely authentic, so work out which company made the bag before asking whether it is real.
What it all means when you buy
Neither one is a 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 check the tag before you look at the price. Should 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. 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 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.
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