Modern design is a type of creative activity that forces us to revise many well-established rules, because the conditions of human interaction with the objective world and the surrounding reality are constantly changing. We notice this fact, in particular, in the growing complication of terminology, which prompts the search for a new typology of subjects. To update the typology the author of the article made an attempt to find historical analogs to an element of women's clothing called “shrug”. When comparing some forms of traditional women's costume, it became necessary to involve a number of ethnographic studies on the clothing of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The author of this article cites one of the facts stated as an argument to substantiate the typological similarity of the subjects under consideration. Fashion design projects of the XX–XXI centuries, complementing the historical and typological range of forms that preceded the “shrug”, demonstrate, on the one hand, a certain continuity. On the other hand, the idea of the criteria for the typology of a garment is being updated, since the emphasis shifts from its formal qualities to the range of possibilities for combining various elements of a suit.