For those Indian and Mexican shirts and smocks so many people are sporting over their jeans, Serendipity (Mt. Auburn St. near Plympton St.), Bown and Board (1063 Mass Ave), George's Folly (30 Brattle St.), and The Lodge (20 Brattle St.) are all possibilities. Serendipity has the largest selection.
Expensive, good quality clothing for men can be found at the Coop, J. August and Co. (1320 Mass Ave), and at several small stores in Brattle Square. For the women and men who can wear boys' sizes The Prep Shop (31 Church St.) is a good idea. Boys' size shirts are a bargain.
Expensive and fashionable clothes for women can be found primarily at three stores: Caezio's (30 Dunster St.) goes in for shoes of that brand name and skirts and dresses of manufacturers such as Crazy Horse. Ann Taylor's (in the glass building in Brattle Square) imports pretty clothes and shoes from all over Europe--for a price. And upstairs from Ann Taylor's is the famous--and infamous--Design Research, or DR as it is called. Specializing in Scandanavian material and clothing as well as imported household goods, DR attracts a chic clientele.
Staples of women's clothing such as underwear and blouses can be picked up at the Coop, or Corcoran's (14 Brattle), or Touraine (38 Brattle St.). Both Corcoran's and Touraine stock reasonably priced and ordinary looking dresses and sportswear, though the latter also carries attractive and expensive shoes.
As you can see from this very partial list, your choice of shopping places is enormous. With fortitude and skepticism you can probably find almost any item you desire at a store near the Square.
Books
The Square is book country. A thriving local industry has grown up on the demands of knowledge-hungry scholars. And competition has managed to breed some excellent bookstores.
The Coop is the largest bookstore and the usual source of textbooks for courses. It carries all of Harvard's textbooks--or at least most of them, most of the time. All of the Coop's books are found in the Annex in back of the main building. Textbooks are on the third floor, paperbacks on the second, and hardcovers on the first.
The Harvard Bookstore (1248 Mass Ave) also stocks many textbooks and the staff is much nicer than the Coop's. They have a big used textbook section, and at the end of the term you can sell them your books for fairly good prices.
Another fine shop is the Paperback Booksmith (37a Brattle St.). PB is open 24 hours a day and provides a haven on those dark nights of the soul when nothing but a book will still the pain. It has the best science fiction selection around, and a lot of good and hard-to-get books on other subjects. The staff is friendly and won't bug you if you spend four hours making up your mind not to buy anything.
Reading International (47 Brattle St.) is okay, its chief attraction being its many foreign periodicals. But for foreign language scholars, Schoenhof's (1280 Mass Ave) is the greatest boon. The store specializes in books of any language, from Amharic to Welsh. Anything you want that they don't have in stock, they will get for you.
Three smaller shops are great for browsing. The Grolier Book Shop (6 Plympton St.) is fine for poetry, the Star Book Shop (29 Plympton St.) buys and sells old and rare books, and the Mandrake Book Store (8 Storey St.) is pleasant all-around.
Newsstands
The Square has two great newsstands which stand across Mass Ave from one another. They are Out of Town Newspapers and Nini's Corner. Out of Town stocks an incredible number of papers and magazines from all over the country and the globe. Nini's has an amazing porno collection, and fruit and peanuts besides