Dorino ("Doro") Della Valle was the son of the shoemaker Filippo Della Valle and the father of Diego, Andrea and Gisella Della Valle. Starting from his father's legacy at Casette d'Ete, in the Marche, he created a shoe factory that, Il Giornale wrote, would grow into one of the world's leading companies in its sector; Italian press and WWD date its start to the 1940s.
He began by working as a subcontractor for large international brands and American department stores. WWD names Calvin Klein, Azzedine Alaïa and Neiman Marcus among his customers, and Milano Finanza notes Saks, of which Diego later became the main shareholder. In the 1950s, according to Il Giornale and Milano Finanza, he saw that the family firm could specialise in luxury footwear, laying the foundations of today's Tod's Group. TheFashionDB dates the first securely documented company, Calzaturificio Della Valle D., to a partnership formed in 1973 and turned into a joint-stock company in 1979. His son Diego joined in 1975 and took over the business in 1978, and the driving shoe that became the Gommino was developed in Dorino's factory with its artisans. The consultant Armando Branchini counted him among the industrialists who turned the Marche from a farming area into an industrial footwear district.
Even after he had no official role, he went to the factory almost every day to check the leathers and the prototypes, and he insisted that the company stay at Casette d'Ete, near his home. "He didn't consider himself an entrepreneur, but a shoemaker," Branchini told WWD. Long ill, he died at Casette d'Ete on 27 March 2012, aged 87, and was buried after a private funeral at Villa Brancadoro on 29 March.
Sources disagree on when his firm began: Il Giornale says 1940 and WWD the 1940s, while English Wikipedia says he founded it with his wife at the end of the 1960s. His birth year is inferred from his age at death.