We propose a thought experiment to introduce the three articles in this volume, focusing specifically on fashion’s encounters with beauty, art and social justice, respectively. Using a both/and approach, we consider the ways in which ‘encounters’ encourage open questioning and debate, when one pairs fashion with beauty, fashion with art and fashion with social justice. Rather than framing the concepts in these pairs oppositionally, we argue that encounters become possible because they resonate or echo – conceptually, aesthetically or affectively – in ways that are nonbinary and nonlinear. As a result, new provocations and lines of inquiry can emerge.