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• Systematic review of application of ML and SC in textile and clothing supply chain. • Yarn and fabric manufacturing stages have most of the applications of ML and SC. • ANN, genetic algorithm and fuzzy logic are the most explored ML and SC techniques. • Lack of collaborative research on ML and SC applications in textile and clothing supply chain. • ML aided fibre development, clothing engineering and fashion forecasting need attention. Machine learning (ML) and soft computing (SC) techniques have contributed immensely towards improvisation of manufacturing, process and quality control, automation of operations, and decision making in the textile and clothing supply chain. The current study systematically reviews 312 research articles published in Scopus indexed journals in last two decades (2000–2020). Bibliometric analysis revealed a drastic rise in number of studies since 2015. Operations related to manufacturing and quality control of yarns and fabrics are found to be benefitted most from ML techniques, as deduced from keyword and thematic content analyses. On the other hand, with respect to ML and SC techniques, artificial neural network, genetic algorithm and fuzzy logic have preponderance over the others. Nevertheless, over the years, many novel ML and SC techniques have emerged in accomplishing diverse objectives of the textile and clothing supply chain. A detailed analysis of their evolution has been documented. Unfortunately, the extent of knowledge sharing and collaboration within the scientific community working in this domain has been very low. This review also unearths lack of integrated focus on complete value chain of textiles and clothing. Fibre development, fuzzy inference and control in textile machines, predictive analytics for clothing engineering, and fashion forecasting have been identified as areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]