Travis Scott has lost another major branding deal in the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, with Dior announcing that it’s calling off a collaboration that was due out next year.
As Women’s Wear Daily reports, the capsule collection between Dior men’s artistic director Kim Jones and Scott’s Cactus Jack label has been indefinitely postponed. The collection — which was going to be Dior’s first with a musician — was set to draw on Scott’s Texas roots as well as the fashion house’s own Parisian past.
“Out of respect for everyone affected by the tragic events at Astroworld, Dior has decided to postpone indefinitely the launch of products from the Cactus Jack collaboration originally intended to be included in its summer 2022 collection,” the company said in a statement.
Reps for Dior and Scott did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s requests for comment.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, Scott’s collaboration with Dior was in jeopardy immediately after Astroworld, where 10 people died and hundreds were injured in a massive crowd crush. One anonymous Dior staffer said at the time that the company was “very concerned,” while luxury-retail expert Thomaï Serdari added she “wouldn’t be surprised” if the line was eventually pulled. “This is about social responsibility and respect to the audience,” Sedari said.
The postponement of the Dior/Cactus Jack collaboration is the second major branding deal Scott has lost, coming weeks after Anheuser-Busch announced that it will no longer distribute the rapper’s Cacti line of hard seltzers. The wildly succesful drink partnership launched in March 2021 and ran until Nov. 30, at which point both sides made a “mutual” decision to cease production on Cacti.
“Travis was clear in his interview that he is not focused on business right now and his priority is helping his community and fans heal,” a representative for Anheuser-Busch said in a statement, referencing Scott’s recent interview with Charlamagne Tha God.
In his first public comments, Scott claimed he only learned that people had died after the festival set ended and claimed he didn’t hear fans screaming between songs for him to stop the concert. The rapper said the show continued for an additional 40 minutes after Houston police determined it was a “mass casualty event” because he claimed he was only told that the show must end after the guests (in this case, Drake) appeared on stage.
Families of victims and their attorneys were not swayed by Scott’s words. Tony Buzbee, a lawyer for the family of Axel Acosta, who died at the festival, told Rolling Stone: “You don’t get to punt back responsibility somewhere else. … These are lessons we learn as children. If he said, ‘I might not be solely the problem, and I’m not solely responsible but that my conduct played a part,’ that doesn’t alleviate the families of their pain, but it at least doesn’t cause any more. What he’s doing now is just causing people more pain.”
On top of losing various brand deals, Scott has been named in the vast majority of the nearly 300 lawsuits that have been filed since Astroworld. Scott and other defendants (like Live Nation, the promoter ScoreMore, the venue NRG Park, and various security companies) have denied the allegations against them, though Scott has also requested he be dismissed from multiple lawsuits he’s named in.
From Rolling Stone US
