The Graffiti bags were the result of Marc Jacobs inviting the New York designer and artist Stephen Sprouse to Louis Vuitton for Spring/Summer 2001. Sprouse, who had worked with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Debbie Harry, scrawled his trademark graffiti lettering straight across the house's sacred Monogram canvas. Sprouse told The Guardian in March 2001 that the idea was entirely Jacobs's: "It was totally his idea to do it." The two had met about a year earlier and worked on the collection in Paris and New York.
The bags were the must-have accessory of the season. Even before they officially went on sale that April, waiting lists at Louis Vuitton stores worldwide were so long that most had stopped taking orders, and the few that reached the Paris store sold out at once. Sprouse also contributed prints of roses and television static to the clothes, made by photographing and scanning images and combining them with outlines from his thick marker pen.
The collaboration opened Jacobs's run of artist projects at Louis Vuitton, followed by Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama. The Graffiti Speedy and Keepall remain among the most collectable Vuitton bags.