Valentino Garavani Crossbody Bag Valentino Raffia Tote

Valentino vs Mario Valentino: One Name, Two Companies

Two Italian companies sell handbags under the word Valentino, the two are unrelated, and the resulting confusion is old enough to have produced its own case law. One is the Roman couture house founded in 1960; the second is a leather goods and footwear business founded in Naples in 1952. Both are entirely legitimate, both hold 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 the agreement requires of each side, what the recent litigation covered and how it concluded, and how a shopper can tell within 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. Read this once and listings stop being hard to read.

Two names, two cities, two businesses

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, Mayhoola for Investments took control in 2012 for roughly 700 million euros, and in July 2023 Kering acquired thirty per cent, with the stated intention of buying the company outright by 2028. Valentino Garavani himself stepped back 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 is a leather goods and footwear house rather than a couture maison. The company operates 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 history.

The 1979 contract that carved up the name

A coexistence agreement signed in 1979 set out which marks each side could put valentino small shoulder bag on which goods, and it remains the reference point for everything that followed. 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. 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 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

The surname on the interior tag of a Roman-house bag is a contractual obligation, not 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 distinct, 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: 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. 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.

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. 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, because it leaves either side free to bring the matter back. According to reporting, more than ten proceedings, including arbitrations, were still live in Italy, so the 2024 dismissal ended one American case rather than the whole disagreement. The action pleaded the following claims:

1. Unfair competition and false advertising.
2. A claimed breach of the 1979 coexistence agreement.
3. Handbags said to be lookalikes of the couture house’s designs.
4. Alleged unauthorised use of the V mark on leather goods.

The disagreement is reported to have escalated from 2017 onward, when handbag advertising began foregrounding the word VALENTINO on its own. Because the case settled, none of the claims was tested to judgment, and no finding of wrongdoing was made against either company.

The second 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 naming problem is not confined to 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.

Which shelves each brand actually reaches

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. The legitimate off-price outlet is THE OUTNET, the off-price arm of Net-a-Porter, though the depth of discount 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. That is why a Valentino bag sale at an off-price chain is seldom what a shopper looking for the couture house actually means. Nothing improper is involved on either side: 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, and Rebag’s data puts the house’s average resale retention near 41 per cent.

Thirty seconds to tell them apart

Start with the inside of the bag, not the outside. On a couture-house bag the interior tag 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, 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. 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 for shopping

Neither company is the counterfeit here, and framing it as fake against real misses the point entirely. If you want the Roman house, search for Valentino Garavani rather than Valentino alone, and read the tag before 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. Where it goes wrong is in resale listings and third-party marketplaces that describe both with one word, which is precisely the territory the 2022 case covered. 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.