ABOUT DAISY’S

Training was for 2 years — full time, at North Warwickshire College. But the real education happened on Fridays and Saturdays, on work experience at Bren's hair salon, shadowing a stylist called Pete Luke. Watching everything, missing nothing. Pete was a genuinely talented hairstylist with credits of his own, well connected within the industry — someone everyone loved, then and now. That apprenticeship opened a different way of seeing the career entirely. Not just a trade. Something closer to art, if you were willing to look at it that way.

After college came Bobby's hair salon, then Rio, working for Gail. Hard work, poor wages as they were back then, and still — every one of those years was loved and appreciated- Although I was very young

Then, for reasons long since blurred with time, hairdressing was left behind altogether. A return to college followed, this time for a diploma in leisure and tourism. Travel came next — briefly through southern India, and throughout Egypt and Crete.Rave dancing at the Eclipse and the outdoor raves across the country- oh the good one days.

Then a small cleaning business called “ Immaculate Dwellings” self-employed, working throughout Leicestershire for many a lovely client.

finding a different way for a while but feeling quite lost.

And then Daisy's Hair Shop was born — a salon in Nuneaton, founded by Janet Watkins our Mum. A complete leap back in, despite the fear.

No natural flair walked through that door on day one. That's not how it happened, and it's not how it happens for most people who end up achieving some levels of success.We were arty and passionate and then we developed — slowly, through repetition, through getting things wrong, through years behind the chair — until a strong identity took shape. Not just for the everyday, wearable styles that paid the bills, but for something bolder. More avant-garde. More willing to take a risk on what hair could actually do.We were known for shorter boldly coloured hairstyles.

Followed by the company Clynol and Wella and of course Sexy hair whom eventually asked us to join them at Salon International London on stage.

There isn't much going out now. The body doesn't always cooperate, and the mind works in ways still being understood — single-minded, tunnelled, completely absorbed by one thing at a time.Although i’m getting older and the body has suffered with one thing or another I still have a curious creative mind.

The work on this site wasn't always made in a shop, salon or studio with a team and a brief. It was sometimes made at a kitchen table, in a conservatory, on a laptop, by someone who hasn't always had the option of being anywhere else. Against the Grain isn't a brand built despite that reality — it's a brand built directly out of it. Creative energy doesn't stop because the body or the circumstances make things harder. It just finds wherever it can go.

The work spans decades - hair, colour, pattern, symbolism — and now since August 2025 AI-assisted reinterpretation too, using tools like Grok to extend and explore pieces that started as a human hair wig or an image. That distinction is always made plain: where the hands made it, and where the machine helped reimagine it.

This isn't a portfolio in the usual sense — admire, scroll, move on. It's closer to an open notebook. The thinking is shown alongside the work, because the point was never just to make things. It was to think differently, and to make a case that anyone can.

Go and think for yourself. The world has enough copies.