AB de Villiers - Brand Ambassador for Mont Blanc
AB de Villiers is one of the most menacing batsmen when out in the middle, but he is a total softie when it comes to matters of the heart.
The South African batting great revealed how he would pen love letters for girls in his school but never actually find the courage to hand it over to them.
"I have a few memories of writing back in the day when I was growing up, when I was in school and learnt to write. The minute I started writing -- I am a bit of romantic -- so every girl that I loved at school I would write a letter but the problem with that was that I was too scared to give it to them. I would go back home with the letter, with a lot of love in there, and would climb to the roof of our house and I would hide the letter there. So they ended up being around 25-30 letters by the end of my school career. All of them I was scared to give it to the girls, and all of them were unread," he said at an event in Mumbai on Tuesday.
In the time of Internet and e-mails, De Villiers took the traditional route, writing a letter to his wife Danielle, who was leaving for South Africa after spending some time with him during the ongoing tenth edition of the Indian Premier League.
"Now that I am a bit older, and have finally got married, I have decided to use all that power to write letters to my wife. Just the other day, when she left from India to go back to South Africa, I slipped a little letter into her passport and I knew that when she got to the airport she would read it. I got a text message from her a day or two later to let me know how much that meant to her. Writing really has the power to change the world.," he added.
De Villiers is one of the most loved foreign players in India; chants of 'AB, AB' have become the norm in stadiums across India when he walks out to bat, even when he is playing against Team India.
The 33-year-old, who has featured in all ten seasons of the IPL, terms playing in the cash-rich Twenty20 extravaganza as a ‘life-changing experience’. He has represented Delhi Daredevils in the first three seasons before switching over to Royal Challengers Bangalore. He has played IPL 127 games, scoring 3453 runs, including two centuries and 22 fifties.
"The last 10 years of the IPL, what I can say, it has been a great ride. It has certainly been life-changing for me. I started my IPL career at Delhi Daredevils for the first three years, which was a very good experience and then moved to Royal Challengers Bangalore, and this is my seventh season with them now. I could not have asked for a better franchise to play IPL for. They are a very professional unit. Unfortunately, this year we haven’t played well as wanted to and I think there are some valuable lessons we have learnt throughout the season," he said.
"Talking about the last 10 years, I think just memories. The memories stand out for me, I have created some great memories over the last 10 years -- the fans, the electric vibes in the grounds we have played, the franchise, the people in and around the team, the people who support us, those of the kind of things that stand out for me in the last 10 years of the IPL. It is just great memories and I am just honoured and privileged to be a part of the IPL," he added.
De Villiers, whose wife is expecting his second child, doesn’t believe that increase in family responsibility will affect his cricketing career.
"I love my child; it is a obviously a huge change in my life when he came around and there is another one on the way, so there are a lot of things changing in my family. I am still very dedicated to what I do for a living, that is play cricket. It is my first love. People can put it like business, but it is not business. I actually love what I do and I have a big passion for cricket, so I will play for as long as I can.
"My next commitment after the IPL is the Champions Trophy, something that South Africa would love to win."
Tom Ford, Artist of the Year
"I always wanted kids, but I really had a bad drinking problem. I couldn’t have had Jack in that state — I’d have dropped him down the stairs and accidentally burned him with a cigarette."
Photography by Gavin Bond. Photographed at Milk Studios, Los Angeles, on August 26, 2016. All clothing and accessories by Tom Ford.
Tom Ford is giving a grammar lesson. He and his husband, Richard Buckley, and their 4-year-old son, Jack, have just relocated to Los Angeles from London, and the designer and filmmaker is doing his best to preserve young Jack’s diction. “He’s losing his English accent very quickly, which I’m a little sad about,” he says in his sonorous voice. “He hasn’t started saying ‘awesome’ yet, which he absolutely cannot say.” Ford shakes his head in dismay and reiterates: “He cannot start saying ‘awesome.’ ” What other words or phrases are banned in the Ford-Buckley residence? “The worst for me is ‘my bad,’” says Ford. “It’s like a country of infants! You hear adults saying things like that — I’m shocked.”
There’s always been a touch of Miss Porter’s Finishing School for Young Ladies about Ford, the most unerringly polite and gracious of subjects I’ve ever interviewed. He describes himself as “an obsessive-compulsive Virgo,” and a certain order and rigor has attended everything he’s ever done, even when he was a raging drunk. “I sound like an old man a lot of times because I am old-fashioned and formal in many ways,” he says. “If Jack would meet you, he would put out his hand and say, ‘Hello, Mr. Hicklin,’ and he’d look you in the eye.”
InStyle Awards Designer of the Year Tom Ford Talks About the Power of Dressing Stars Versus Characters
Who's the best dressed of them all for 2016? And who are the designers, artists, and creative geniuses behind some of the most memorable looks of the red carpet?
Come Monday, the fashion world will turn its attention to the Getty Center in Los Angeles, where the second annual InStyle Awards will bring together an exceptional group of honorees and presenters to celebrate both the most stylish stars and our heroes behind the scenes who help create such inspiring fashion moments. I'm certainly looking forward to getting back to the amazing setting of the Getty Center, where our event unfolds with such an incredible backdrop overlooking the city at sunset. And I can't wait to see Tom Ford, our night's designer of the year, who is truly having an incredible year between wowing us with his first in-season fashion presentation and thrilling us with the upcoming release of his second feature film, Nocturnal Animals.
So to give you a little preview of what to expect on Monday night, I asked Tom for a few words on a subject that is near and dear to all of us: the red carpet.
You tend to keep your dresses very exclusive, often designing just one for the Oscars each year. What is the value of keeping yourself scarce as a designer? When you have the right dress on the right celebrity, it's more powerful than having a lot of dresses on too many celebrities, and not the right one. It's kind of like the concept of would you like to have one beautiful thing in your living room, and not a lot of stuff? Or would you want to have a lot of stuff and not that one really great piece that you wanted? I find when I really focus on one person that I'm able to be the most concentrated. Usually, it's someone I know or whom I have tremendous respect for as an actress. Also, it often allows that person to really feel they are wearing something special, to know that you are not doing anything for anyone else, and it often yields the most exciting results.
What makes the difference between a magical red carpet moment and just another dress? It's about matching the dress with the person. Before I even talk to someone about a dress I pull up every picture I can find of her online to see what she looks great in, because usually people look their best when they feel most comfortable. I don't mean comfort in terms of comfort—usually these women are in corsets and Spanx and all sorts of tricks to make their bodies look the best that they can—but comfort in terms of feeling that they look great.