Let no thirst for Harvard merch go unslaked. After a two-month shutdown, the J. August store reopens Friday under new management with a collection of Harvard hoodies, Harvard tees, Harvard knit caps and Harvard flags – a relief for tourists and other shoppers unable to find the Harvard hoodies, tees, knit caps and flags they want at the student-run Harvard Shop a couple of minutes’ walk away (or at the square’s two other Harvard Shops) or at the Harvard Coop across the street from it, or at the Harvard Book Store down the avenue or randomly in shops around Greater Boston.
The store is now under the management of Rally House, a Kansas business that boasts of having more than 280 stores across 23 states selling college-affiliated and sports gear. It’s Rally House’s first shop in Massachusetts, said district manager Scott Mikesic, a Philadelphian who was busy unpacking the store Wednesday.
Mikesic was asked if Rally faced competition in the square. “No,” he said. “I mean, we look at our product as the best product. We’ll have local gifts. And we feel that our brands are better than anybody in the market right now.”
“From apparel to auto to pet to anything that you may need as a gift or for yourself,” it will be at the J. August, Mikesic said.
J. August opened in 1891 at 1324 Massachusetts Ave., a building owned by The Porcellian Club, a Harvard student organization.
The Porcellian is an all-male club at what began as a men’s college, and J. August has its roots in that history.
“Back before my day – actually, in the day – there were 13 men’s clothing stores in Harvard Square. Because Harvard was a boys school that had a dress code, there were lots of opportunities for places for them to go,” said Gary Drinkwater, owner of the men’s clothing shop Drinkwater’s in North Cambridge since 2004. (He previously worked at Stonestreets, one of those Harvard Square menswear shops.) “But as Harvard became coed and relaxed their dress code, a lot of those shops ended up going by the wayside.”
The baker’s dozen went down to around a half-dozen hanging on until the 1960s or 1970s, but “a lot of men weren’t buying,” Drinkwater said Thursday in his shop. In Harvard Square, the men’s clothes tradition continues on Holyoke Street at The Andover Shop – in business for only around 75 years compared with the 135 of J. August.
The J. August that sold Harris tweed sports jackets and wool knit ties and Shetland sweaters “and all those things that represent the Ivy League look” transformed itself into a merch store, Drinkwater said. Its purpose now is that when a tourist bus stops on Massachusetts Avenue, “a group of people stream off that bus and go right across the street and they go right to J. August.”
This post was updated April 3, 2026, to correct a reference to Harris tweed.
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