In a previous life, as a fashion buyer, an older and much-lauded colleague was prone to observing: “You never did nothing wrong by buying black.” The same, it would appear, applies to much of store design.

Travel broadens the mind. Travel far enough and you mind should be correspondingly expanded – or at least that’s what logic would seem to say.

Attending a retail design awards ceremony in Dallas last week therefore, it seemed reasonable to suppose that things would be different and that those scooping gongs would have environments unfamiliar to a European.

Yet as one after another triumphant winner ascended the platform to shake hands and walk away with a prize, the images of the projects that they had worked on all seemed a little similar. In a previous life, as a fashion buyer, an older and much-lauded colleague was prone to observing: “You never did nothing wrong by buying black.”

The same, it would appear, applies to much of store design. If you want to garner plaudits, get out the matt black spray gun, cover most of what is on view and then apply some dramatic lighting to the interior to gain traction with the ‘lighting the stock, not the store’ crowd.

In fairness, a walk around a nearby mall, of gargantuan proportions, revealed a good number of interesting stores where colour did play a part. But even here, black remained the new black – a safe fallback in a moment of doubt.

There was also some interesting news about Starbucks. Yup, Starbucks. It is the general policy of this magazine not to cover catering and beverage retailers, but it is worth noting what the purveyor of buckets of frothy coffee is doing in its home town of Seattle, for the wider implications that it has for retailing as a whole.

A new branch of Starbucks has opened in the city in which there is absolutely no reference made to the brand, either in the outlet’s design, the cups that the coffee is served in, or the associated merchandise that is on sale. This is a trial. Starbucks wants to see whether de-branding an outlet will yield better results and whether it will bond more effectively with the local community by not having its logo above the door.

And the early indications are that it works. For retailers looking to make an impact at a local level, there is a case for doing something similar, albeit highly selectively. The corporate high street is something that has been noted for years and Starbucks seems to be picking up on a way of reasserting the excitement that it used to engender.

Oh yes, and if you really do want to see some good retail design, sans black, come along to the Retail Interiors Awards tomorrow night at the Hilton on Park Lane.

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