The fashion industry has been subject to enduring criticism about its negative social and environmental impact over issues including child labour, worker exploitation and pollution (Claudio, 2007; Nagurney and Yu, 2012; Turker and Altuntas, 2014; Freise and Seuring, 2015; Boström and Micheletti, 2016). Furthermore, the increasing trends of supply chain time compression, responsiveness and agility, and the outsourcing of production to lower labour cost countries, particularly in Asia, has increased the fashion sector’s risk to natural and man-made disasters (see, e.g. Christopher and Holweg, 2011; Bradley, 2014; Mehrjoo and Pasek, 2016). Evidence suggests that business disruptions due to sustainability issues revolve around supply chains (Lee and Vachon, 2016), and with their geographic complexity and pressure for cost and lead time reduction, fashion supply chains (FSCs) are particularly susceptible to these (Hofmann et al., 2014; Perry and Towers, 2013; Boström and Micheletti, 2016). Such disruptions can lead to various risks, for example financial risks due to lost sales and environmental penalties and reputational risk due to negative publicity (Lee and Vachon, 2016). It is imperative for FSCs to understand sustainability, integrate it into their strategy and ensure good management for supply chain continuity and viability to avoid disruption or business failure (Caniato et al., 2012). Risk management is of critical importance due to increased frequency of risks, longer recovery time and the focal firm’s responsibility for unethical issues and any actions (or lack of) at any tier in its supply chain (Christopher and Holweg, 2011). Yet, little is known about the relationship between sustainability and risk issues in supply chains in general (Lee and Vachon, 2016), nor in volatile and unpredictable demand situations such as FSCs. It is not clear what sustainability risk is, how companies in volatile and demand-driven markets such as fashion are or should be managing it, how sustainability risk affects operational performance in FSCs and, finally, what could be an appropriate framework or typology for managing supply chain sustainability risk (SCSR). Hence, this paper responds to the call for further work on “sustainability risk” (Giannakis and Papadopoulos, 2015) by critically reviewing the extant literature to understand and synthesise sustainability and risk management in FSCs in order to shape a future research agenda. The demand for this investigation is due to the interrelationships between the two constituent parts, an overlap of concepts and measures, given the fashion industry’s significant global reach in both production and demand markets (Nagurney and Yu, 2012), as well as its importance to our current way of life and economy (Giannakis and Papadopoulos, 2015). This paper is organised as follows. The next section recaps the methods followed to conduct this systematic literature review (SLR). The third section presents the results of the critical review and highlights the important issues found in the literature. The fourth section sheds light on combinatory sustainability and risk management and the final section proposes future empirical research directions and conclusions.