The Australian cotton industry is committed to improving on-farm sustainability; however, as the raw material travels through the ‘value adding’ stages in the globalised fashion and textile industries, it is uncertain how its ‘sustainable value’ is transferred into the final product. The central aim of this research is to analyse how the Australian cotton industry can understand where value is created, as well as opportunities to create sustainable value along its supply chain. To explore this question, a tailored tool was developed that combines value chain analysis methods with value mapping interview techniques. This involved ‘walking’ the chain from fibre to finished fashion product to disposal. A total of 21 stakeholders were interviewed across two Australian cotton value chains from growers to retailers through to actors that collect discarded garments. Participants identified what sustainable value is, how it is created, who it benefits both in and beyond the chain (including local communities, the environment and consumers) and where future opportunities to create further value may lie. This study delivers three original contributions to the knowledge surrounding how sustainability is valued within the fashion value chain. First, the development of a method and approach which proposes another way of understanding sustainable value through ‘asking’ actors specifically what they value and why, and converging these insights to better understand the entire chain. Second, through mapping the Australian cotton value chain, it identifies actors’ experiences and perceptions of sustainability which have previously been unexamined, noting where these perceptions converge and diverge. It pinpoints the complexities that face the Australian cotton industry’s transfer of sustainable value within global value chains, such as the separation between raw material producers and retailers, as well as locked-in practices (i.e. blending fibres) which inhibit traceability and circularity. The results demonstrate a need to create a shared understanding of ‘on-farm’ sustainability. The study identifies elements to best do this through substantive (LCA data) and symbolic (storytelling) sustainability messages – and proposes how these can be co-created with stakeholders. From this, the study offers a third contribution by extending understandings around sustainability and its value within the context of fashion and textile value chains, and identifies practices that can be taken up more broadly to further sustainability within the industry.