Embracing Our Sidekick Energy

Five Ideas to Inspire Your Outfits This Week

Mar 11, 2023

This week, I remembered an experience I had with a very drunk man. Around ten years ago, I had gone to visit my friend, Jon, during his bartending shift. My friend, Hilary, and I sat down at the bar and next to me was a man, alone, and quite drunk, likely in his forties. He periodically injected in our conversations, gleaning from them that I was an actor. Entirely unprovoked, he told me that I should accept that I’d never be a leading lady, that I was quirky sidekick material at best.

This was a maddening experience, to say the least. Mostly because at 23, and in my first year out of college, my confidence in my own abilities wasn’t exactly great. To have it announced, loudly and with slurred speech, to a bar full of strangers, that I’d never achieve my goals was fairly horrifying.

And while I proved that man wrong (and never saw him again), now that I’m a bit older and grizzled and jaded, I have to ask, what’s so wrong with the sidekick? Sidekicks are usually more interesting with a better backstory. Their quirks give an actor more room to play. And, almost always, they dress with far more panache than their leading lady counterpart.

Which leads me to our first idea for outfit inspiration this week:

Since the pandemic, many outlets have claimed we all have “main character energy” now. Can you shirk the trend and embrace your sidekick energy instead? Can you wear an outfit that embodies your quirky sidekick style?
Mindy (with Emily) in Emily in Paris. A prime example of the more interesting, better dressed, sidekick. (Also, sidekicks usually get hats. Does your sidekick outfit include a hat?
Looking for more offbeat inspiration? One of my favorite experiments from Costume Parade was planning outfits inspired by my “Quirky” Pinterest board. (I tried this twice! Here’s the first post and the second.)
Can you make your own Pinterest board of quirky, weird, lighthearted inspiration, choose a pin, then plan an outfit inspired by it?
(If this feels too time consuming, you’re welcome to my Quirky Pinterest board. Perhaps something there will get your gears spinning.)
Some inspiration examples from my Quirky Pinterest board
My son, Mateo, is two and a half. His speech has exploded lately, and with that has come so many more opinions, and stories, and songs, about all of the things that he loves. When he can wear clothes emblazoned with what he loves across them he practically glows with excitement. (His current favorites are dinosaur T-shirts and Paddington pajamas.) This week, can you borrow some of Mateo’s enthusiasm, and advertise what you love with your outfit?
While perusing The RealReal this week, I came across this Johanna Ortiz top. It reminded me that I’ve always wanted to try a red + purple outfit. Do you want to experiment with red and purple, too?
This week I learned about Bernadette Meyer’s writing prompts. Can you reinterpret one of her prompts and use it to inspire an outfit?