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I always wanted to tell stories. Well, at least, I always came back to the notion of storytelling when the glitz and glamour of being a special effects designer or a fighter pilot or a DEA agent wore off.

Every designer needs a story. Mine is all about glamour because my family has been in the business of glamour for three generations. My grandfather Shamshuddin Khan started his embroidery and fabric-making business in the 1930s.

So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them.

We all tell our own stories the way we live our lives. My story is: Life is too short to not believe in fresh voices. I don't have Hollywood stars. I have great American artists.

I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.

At school, a careers adviser asked me what I wanted to be, and I said 'fashion journalist,' so writing for 'Vogue' has provided me with the opportunity to fulfill a dream.

My growth as an artist and a person has been so slow and gradual, it's hard to make a story out of it.

At one point, I had a story accepted at the 'New Yorker,' which sent off weird bells in people when I told them - 'Oh,' they thought, 'now you are a writer' - where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.

As a journalist, as a screenwriter and as a director, I'm trying to tell compelling and truthful stories.

I write and draw from the gut. I often don't know what my stories are about until they're done.