By Leicester Mercury | Posted 02 March, 2015
The Two of Us: Imogen Cox, 47, and Charlotte Thompson, 44, have been friends for almost 10 years. Together, they organise the annual LOROS Fashion Show, which raises thousands of pounds for the charity each year. The pair discuss how the charity has brought them together in this week's 'Two of us' feature
Imogen: Charlotte started out as my mum’s personal trainer and that’s how we met – because mum recommended her to me. I started training with her and that’s how we became friends.
Charlotte ran marathons – she’s done a ridiculous amount of marathons – and she’d chosen LOROS as a charity she wanted to support.
One of my best friends, Claire Webber, died at LOROS, so it was something I felt strongly about, too.
Before Claire died, the two of us had organised fundraisers for Cancer Research UK, but after seeing how beautifully she was looked after at LOROS, I decided I wanted to start supporting them.
It all tied in with Charlotte’s fundraising and we decided we wanted to do something together.
That’s how the fashion show came about. We started in 2011. By that time, I was still training on and off with Charlotte, but it was a friendship by them. We get on so well – it seems like I’ve known her for ages.
The show was on a very small scale at first. We didn’t really do any practising for it but it went well and it just evolved from there. It’s gone from strength to strength and has become almost an all-year-round thing to plan now.
Every show, we’ve raised more than £6,000. Every year, the day afterwards, we’ll meet up and discuss what we liked, what we didn’t like and what we could change for the following year.
We’ve changed venues this time, from the King Power Stadium to Athena, and we booked it within a couple of weeks of last year’s show. We wanted to change it and move it up a level.
We both know what a brilliant charity LOROS is. The phrase I use is that if you’ve been unfortunate enough to have to experience LOROS, you become fortunate to experience the amazing work they do. The atmosphere is light and positive and the staff are amazing.
When Claire was there, they let her dogs visit her shortly before she died, which was one thing that stood out for me. I know she was so grateful for how they looked after her.
I don’t have much time to train with Charlotte now but I’ll train with her every now and then. It’s much more than that now, though – our joint passion is LOROS and raising money through the fashion show.
It works because we’re so different. Charlotte is the ideas person and I’m… well, she’s a lot more exuberant than I am. Charlotte will come up with an amazing idea and I’ll work out how we can make it work for the show.
We describe our fashion show meetings as like a mum and daughter chat: she’ll be like the excitable daughter, wanting to do this, this and this, and I calm her down a bit.
Charlotte is great fun and hugely enthusiastic. I’ve no idea where she gets her energy from. She gets up at 4.30am every day and starts with a run. I really don’t know how she does it.
We agree that we couldn’t do the show without each other. Teamwork is about finding our different strengths. I’m maybe a bit too cautious sometimes. When we meet in the middle, we’ve got something really successful.
I feel really proud of how the show has grown. It’s scary because it’s a massive responsibility – you’re entertaining a room full of hundreds of people.
Now, five years down the line, the show is unrecognisable from what it was when it started. Considering we’re not from fashion backgrounds, I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved.
We have different roles. I pick all the music, do the choreography, liaise with DJs. Charlotte contacts shops and sorts out the models. We come together for the ticket design and poster design.
On the night, I’ll be on stage, compering, and Charlotte will be running around behind the scenes. I suppose the roles are reversed on the evening because I’m the confident one, up in front of everyone on stage.
We see each other regularly, but as it comes up to the show it becomes much more often. And we’re in touch all the time on e-mail and text, almost to the point where the words “fashion show” get banned from our houses at this time of year as that’s all we talk about.
At other times, we’ll train together or have dinner. Our husbands know each other and my step-daughter is friends with Charlotte’s daughter. We’re in and out of each other’s houses – it’s that kind of friendship.
The thing is with Charlotte is she’s so enthusiastic and has so much cheek (in a nice way) she gets so much offered to her. She’s so good at getting people to help out, and that’s why the show has grown so much.
Charlotte: I would say me and Imogen are like family now, because we’re such good friends and know each other so well.
She inspired me with my fundraising. She told me she’d organised an event that had raised £15,000 and I remember thinking how incredible that was.
I was raising money for charity but it was all my own small stuff – running and getting sponsored, making cakes for donations and things like that. I’d never organised a big event before or raised that kind of money. Imogen spurred me on.
Our friendship grew through LOROS. I only really started thinking about the first show a month beforehand and rang Imogen in a panic asking her to do the compering. It went brilliantly and people said they loved it and started to ask when the next one would be.
We work well together because we are very different. I say Imogen is my equivalent friend to my husband – I jump in at the deep end and he’s there to pull me out, and she’s like that, too.
One time, I called her up to say I had 20 naked rowers I wanted to include in the show. I thought they could do some modelling and just strip off at the end. I was so excited about it.
But Imogen went all quiet on the phone then reminded me it was a family event. And she was right. And that’s how she is – she just reins me in a bit.
This year, I’ve organised for bikes to be a part of the show. I wanted them doing stunts and coming down through the audience. When I told Imogen she had a lot of questions: ‘Where will they put them? What about the ramp? What about health and safety?’ We’ve compromised. It always ends up in the middle somewhere.
We discuss everything. We don’t even say hello now when we answer the phone to each other. It’s straight into: ‘You know the second scene, can we do this... and what about that for that bit?’
We both think about the fashion show all year round. I go anywhere and see an opportunity. In fact, I just stopped a really good-looking guy in the Highcross and asked him if he’d be in it.
I see opportunities everywhere. It’s become my life. I think the show shows a different side to LOROS. It brings something younger to the fundraising.
Me and Imogen are friends first and foremost, and it’s our friendship that drives all this. Imogen’s my funny friend, I always say. I find her hilarious.
We don’t really ever disagree. We’re both very focused on what we want to achieve.
I do things spur of the moment. For example, I was walking past a bar – Bar 33 Cank Street – which I thought looked good, went in and spoke to the manager and now they’re coming to take over a bar for this year’s show.
And we’ve got dancers from Studio 79 and the Anne Elizabeth Theatre Group. Businesses including Christopher Scotney and Indy are involved. I’m happy to ask people to help out. But I think if I was left to my own devices I would end up putting too much into one event. It would go on all day.
I always say we see each other intensively for six months – we’re inseparable. Then, for the three months afterwards we’ll have the odd conversation, because we’re fashion show-ed out. Then the next three months we’ll be building up to the intense six months again.
We both genuinely want to raise money and make a difference for LOROS.
The annual LOROS Fashion Show takes place on Saturday, March 7, at Athena, in the Cultural Quarter of the city centre. Doors open from 5pm for food, drinks, cocktails and shopping. The catwalk show starts 7.30pm and tickets are £10. For more information, visit: www.loros.co.uk
