My mum was very conscious about fashion and my dad was born into the tailoring tradition so fashion has always been my life although now really I wear the same thing - just in different weights - light and heavy cashmere in winter and cotton in summer.

From about eight years old I was always making things on the sewing machine. Friends would see me making dresses and costumes and I'd use difficult fabrics such as Lycra and elastic. But you know my dad was creative and my brother is inventive too.

I've got my dad's height and smoking habit. But I think I've got my mum's looks and sensibilities.

Going through the grief period of my dad and losing him - that was the worst thing because you know when you get that call. When you are seven eight years old you have that almost vision in your mind of what that's going to be like and what your going to feel like and it doesn't prepare you.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

My parents moved to American Samoa when I was three or four years old. My dad was principal of a high school there. It was idyllic for a kid. I had a whole island for a backyard. I lived there until I was eight years old and we moved to Santa Barbara.

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

My dad was the manager at the 45 000-acre ranch but he owned his own 1 200-acre ranch and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.

I was born in 1968 just eighteen months after my sister Chrisse and just one year after Dad passed the bar exam.

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.