Q&A: Pinstriped Zine
ROOTED IN A LOVE FOR MUSIC AND SUPPORTING THE LOCA SCENE - Pinstriped Zine showcases rising talent through their quarterly zines and shows. Featuring show coverage, photography, writing and more, Pinstriped is helping foster the community creative, both online and in person. Throwing shows in the LA area, Pinstriped simple love for music and bringing people together has allowed them to grow and find an audience down for anything. Check out their latest issue and read below to learn more about their start, what’s next and more.
LUNA: For those unfamiliar, can you please introduce Pinstriped?
PINSTRIPED: Pinstriped Zine is a Los Angeles-based art and music online-zine created by Arianna May. We are constantly on the look-out for new visual artists, writers and musicians to submit their work. We release issues quarterly. Every one is formed together with love; although most importantly with the help of our contributors around the world. We also include show coverage documented by our volunteer photographers on our website. You can find us on Instagram at @pinstripedzine, where we share updates about shows, featured creators, show coverage and other announcements.
LUNA: What ultimately lead to you creating Pinstriped?
PINSTRIPED: Pinstriped started out as a side project to keep me occupied with a creative outlet in my senior year of High School. Since I never went to college I immediately started becoming a full-time freelance artist. Pinstriped really started vastly growing with me, as it needed so much attention and care (which was a great thing at the time). That was 2017, which feels so recent ago. Pinstriped really helped assist me into becoming an adult and expressing my skills in event planning, website formatting, curating, communicating and so many more important business/life skills.
LUNA: What have you been inspired by lately? How do you stay motivated in your creative endeavors?
PINSTRIPED: Quarantine definitely made it pretty difficult to maintain inspiration, in all honesty. We just released issue 15 during the first month of quarantine. The pressure of having such a large amount of free time to create has been difficult (as I’m sure it is for lots of other artists). Although seeing the contributions flood to our email really brought a creative spark back for me. Our contributors, readers and those we follow on IG/Twitter keep us motivated and excited to release more content.
LUNA: What do you love about your audience?
PINSTRIPED: We absolutely adore the support our audience gives to our contributors. They are so sweet and excited when new issues are released. Since we have various ages tuning in, we really love to converse through social media as much as we can. The communication between us and our readers gives us lots of insight on the kinds of content they’d like to see from us in the future.
LUNA: Do you have any dream collaborations / features?
PINSTRIPED: Pinstriped would love to collaborate with Pure Nowhere and The Luna Collective in the future! We aren’t approached often to collab, but we had Luna Collective vend our 3-year anniversary party in February 2020 and it was so fun making new connections.
LUNA: Y'all have had some great shows & definitely support young artists. Why is it important to host events & have a community for young creatives?
PINSTRIPED: Thank you! Since my friends and I are in bands, I found myself wanting to put them all on a lineup together for Pinstriped’s first anniversary. I honestly didn’t think a lot of people would come out, but to my surprise a lot of people I’ve never met before came through. The local music scene is incredibly valued to us. Shows make people feel welcomed and loved. Throwing shows may have just started as a fun one-time thing for us, but seeing how much fun everyone was having at our events made it something to always look forward to. Keep your local scene alive.
LUNA: If you could share any piece of advice for those wanting to start a zine or creative project, what would you like to pass along?
PINSTRIPED: If you’ve been considering putting a zine or collective together - DO IT! It’s an amazing outlet and I’m so grateful to have been pushed by my parents to start Pinstriped. I was sitting on the idea for so long, definitely over a year. I thought it would be such a stressful task and yes…. It is; but It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. It connects you to so many wonderfully creative souls.
LUNA: In what ways would you like to see Pinstriped expand?
PINSTRIPED: I would love to see PZ expand by collaborating and promoting more music-related content. I am completely open to whatever is in PZ’s future as long as we maintain our local-scene supporting integrity!
LUNA: How are you taking care of yourself during quarantine?
PINSTRIPED: I’ve been trying to keep a positive mindset in quarantine. Connecting to other content creators, friends, loved ones has kept me pretty sane and motivated for PZ's future. I’m loosely planning right now for Pinstriped. I am considering some new ideas to incorporate into our mag, perhaps like bringing our advice column back. I would really love to say I could throw another event (maybe have an art show!) but of course I can’t plan details in this moment. Hopefully that is something I can do in 2021.
