And there’s a certain amount of jumping-to-conclusions before all the facts are in that comes from the anonymity of the social media mob. But the Dior brouhaha also suggests there is something deeper at work.

Image From Gucci’s fall 2018 collection. Credit... Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Because here’s the thing: Dior knew better. It had been through this last November, when a campaign for the pre-spring collection starring Jennifer Lawrence wearing clothes inspired by the Mexican escaramuzas did not go down well.

The company then addressed the issue specifically in the cruise collection, held in Marrakesh and done in collaboration with several African artists and artisans (that wasn’t without controversy but was generally seen as a step forward). This time, the house thought it had acted better.

But none of that seemed to matter.

The campaign, which was for the latest version of Sauvage, a men’s scent created in 1966, was called “We are the Land.” It was shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino and starred Mr. Depp as well as Canku One Star of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe .

When Dior decided on the concept of the Sauvage ad (which follows a commercial made in 2015, when Mr. Depp joined the brand, that showed him on the open road in the West, doing similar sorts of soul-searching loner things), the brand reached out to an indigenous advocacy organization, Americans for Indian Opportunity , as advisers. (The head of the A.I.O., Ladonna Harris, had been instrumental in having Mr. Depp adopted as part of the Comanche Nation during the filming of “The Lone Ranger.”)