66

The changes experienced by the Romanian clothing industry over the past 30 years are examined in this article. Several types of data are drawn upon (archive records, interviews, observations and so on) with the objective of defining in concrete terms the manifold forms of “continuity” and “breakaway” which came into play with the collapse of the planned economy. The sociological theory of path dependency provides some pointers on how to analyse this question, but its strong focus on the macro-social determinations of economic activities cannot cut through the complexity of choices and individual strategies that emerged during the 1990s. However, it remains important to emphasize the diversity of individual paths followed _ within a sector presumed to be dominated solely by economic criteria.