What will happen to the collabo between Travis Scott and Dior?

That the tragedy at the Astroworld Festival in Houston - defined by The Guardian as "one of the deadliest live music events in US history" - would have left significant aftermaths was predictable enough, that these aftermaths would also affect Dior's future was less predictable. Unveiled last June, Kim Jones and Travis Scott's SS22 men's collection was an impeccable marketing move that brought one of the idols of Gen Z and Hype Culture to the court of the French brand, but the latest developments have turned it into what Reputation Management Consultants President, Eric Schiffer, has called an "apocalyptic marketing breakthrough".

According to Rolling Stones, the Cactus Jack x Dior Homme line is presumably already in stock, as items in a collection are usually produced six months before the release date. The maison, which in the past had already linked itself to a controversial name - Johnny Depp, testimonial of the perfume Sauvage had been accused of domestic harassment by ex-wife Amber Heard - is now in front of a crucial choice: to go out with the collection despite scandal, indelibly tarnishing its reputation and tying its name to the rapper protagonist of what will become one of the bloodiest musical tragedies in American history or throwing away the work of months without having an alternative with which to go out for the SS22.

Nike, which has a long-standing partnership with Scott and a new five-pair collaboration of Air Max 1 dropping with the rapper, is facing a similar problem, but not nearly as serious, because the brand usually weighs these kinds of risks well in order to always have another person with whom it already has a collaboration to resort to. A possible option for Dior - unless it brings out an entire new season of products already made and heavily promoted - and also for Nike, would be to add a significant charitable component to the line, giving to the concert victims a significant contribution on each product sold, without however averting the inevitable media fury that will follow the release of any Travis Scott collaboration and obtaining only a weak rehabilitation in the eyes of the buyers.

"We are very worried", revealed an anonymous member of the Parisian brand's staff to Rolling Stones. Regardless of what Dior's choice will be, this stall tells us in many ways the lack of communication between two worlds, fashion and rap, which travel at two totally different speeds. If in the world of fashion the collections are presented months before the actual release, in rap the relevance of an artist is able to swell and deflate in a very short time. In addition to the Astroworld tragedy and the repercussions on LaFlame's career, we could mention the rapid decline of DaBaby after his statements or even, more trivially, the very short window of notoriety of a rapper closely linked to the release of a record or a promotion. What happened was obviously impossible to predict, but the choice of Kim Jones (who has made collaboration his trademark) certainly falls on the list of those decisions full of doubts and questions due to the irreconcilable nature of the two worlds impossible to unite.