Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor don’t seem like your average business moguls; by rights, they should be trophy wives. Nash-Taylor is married to Duran Duran’s John Taylor and Skaist-Levy’s husband is the Hollywood movie producer Jeff Levy. Yet these identically dressed, small-dog-owning, LA-living best friends, who have inspired not one but two incarnations of Barbie, are the brains and brilliance behind one of America’s most successful fashion brands.

Springing out of the Bentley she has parked, in her personal spot behind the Rodeo Drive Juicy Couture flagship store, is Nash-Taylor. Wearing a pair of the tiniest denim hotpants, Prada gladiators and with her signature long, long hair, she looks as high maintenance as they come. She is the kind of woman who doesn’t drink from a Starbucks beaker; she has her own personalised paper cups. “I’m so into monogramming. I’m doing it on everything right now.”

Inside the boutique, there is a whole world of Juicy. What started out with velour tracksuits is now a business that encompasses everything from dog accessories to cashmere dresses, children’s wear, trinkets, watches, fragrances, sunglasses and shoes. You name it, there’s a Juicy version of it. “We brought LA chic to the whole world,” she says. “Now, that casual kind of lifestyle dressing is everywhere.”

Friends since they met in 1988, the two women share everything, from their office to their outfits. They even drive to work together. They met by chance. “It was so LA,” says Skaist-Levy. “We were both covering at a clothing store for a friend who was in rehab.” They founded their fashion business based on stylish basics, peddling bubble-gum-coloured velour tracksuits that could be comfortable and sexy at the same time, for everyone from teenagers to grandmothers. While others might have been surprised at their success, they aren’t. “It’s funny. We always thought we were going to be big,” says Nash-Taylor. “There was a moment when I was in Beverly Hills at some diagonal crossings. I looked up and realised there was someone wearing a Juicy tracksuit on every single corner.”

What is so appealing about them — beyond the full-on outfits and the screaming laughter — is the fact that they have done it all their own way. Their famous humour is evident in the brand (one of their bestselling T-shirts was emblazoned with the logo “Prince Harry is a fox”). “When people meet us, I don’t know what they are expecting,” says Skaist-Levy. “Crazy Imelda Marcos people or something. But we really are, like, low-key.” Well, if they’re low-key, it’s certainly their very own Juicy version of it.

In 2003, Juicy Couture was bought by the American retail giant Liz Claiborne for an undisclosed sum, but Skaist-Levy and Nash-Taylor remain creative directors. Their offices, in the decidedly unglamorous area of Pacoima on the outskirts of LA, are still a paean to pink — all candy-coloured walls, enormous Juicy-embossed surfboards, Juicy logos and a huge room filled with sewing machines and piles of bright fuchsia terry cloth. It is hard to believe that, 15 years ago, they started the business with just $200 each and Skaist-Levy’s cleaner doubled up as their warehouse manager.

In a room the size of a tennis court sit two identical desks,s side by side, each with matching faux-Louis XIV sofas opposite them. Nash-Taylor is now perched on one in skyscraper heels, wearing a black body-con dress that hugs her teeny-tiny 5ft 2in frame, eating her usual breakfast of a bran-and-yoghurt cup (“I call it my horse mix. Pam and I have this every morning.”) Skaist-Levy is on speakerphone. She is laid up at home today with a broken foot, thanks to an incident while skimboarding with her son in Malibu at the weekend.

With sales reaching as much as $50m before Liz Claiborne even got involved, the pair now sit at the helm of a business estimated to have done about $700m in sales last year. They have 75 shops and counting — the latest is a five-storey town house in Mayfair. “People never used to take us seriously,” says Nash-Taylor, pausing before adding, “they do now,” and throwing her head back in laughter.

Skaist-Levy lives the ultimate LA-style good life, with two homes to show for it. One, a famous colonial estate in Beverly Hills, was described by its interior designer as like “the Duchess of Windsor meets Iron Maiden”. The seven-bedroom mansion is stacked with French antiques, modern art (several Schnabels, some Robert Motherwells and a Chuck Close self-portrait) and plush, CZ Guest-inspired furnishings. She is known for being a tad outrageous. “I got married really young, and my husband always let me be a kid,” she says. She famously used to strap her son Noah’s child seat into her Ferrari, and once shocked the entire shop staff of Hermès in Paris by purchasing a pair of leather gloves, only to ask for a pair of scissors and chop the fingers off them. When not residing in faux-colonial splendour, she retreats to her beach house at Malibu, where her neighbours happen to include “Tom Hanks, Pamela Anderson, John McEnroe. Just an array of crazies”.

Nash-Taylor met her pop-star husband in 1996; they were married in Vegas three years later. “John called me up and said, ‘We’re getting married this weekend.’” Slowly, she has come round to England. “I’ve always had a thing for old,” she says. Which is why, four years ago, after spying it in Country Life, the Taylors bought South Wraxall Manor, a 14th-century, nine-bedroom pile in Wiltshire, where they now spend about two months a year, with Nash-Taylor playing a rather tongue-in-cheek lady of the very grand manor. She worked with Robert Kime (decorator to Prince Charles) on the house. “Because I’m American and who I am, I wanted it a little bit more glamorous than he liked. I was, like, I want Four Seasons-style bathrooms!” The result is a no-holds-barred, de Gournay-filled, full-on fantasy-style English home, complete with fully stocked mud room. “We have all the wellies lined up.”

She has a horse called Etiquette, and mixing with the horsey set amuses her. “I went riding in these big Georgian earrings, with a little capelet on, and the big scary person I went riding with was, like, ‘Take those earrings off.’ ” Make no mistake about it, country life is all about the outfits. “When Pam came to visit for the first time, we wore some little Juicy short riding pants, boots and little hats. We were just decked out. We walked into the village and we were like, ‘Oh my God.’ Everybody was in tank tops and flip-flops. It was crazy.”

It’s hard to imagine where these two women might go from here. They have the fantasy life: the business, the husbands, the clothes and the homes. “I think everybody thought that when we sold our business to Liz Claiborne, we would just stop,” says Skaist-Levy. “But you don’t, because it’s fun to work.” Nash-Taylor agrees. “I want to write our book,” she says. “You know, we really did start with $200. We did it without a business plan. It was just common sense. And when women see us, they go, ‘Yay!’ Ours is a good story. It’s a fun story.” Well, you certainly can’t disagree with that.

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