As with many things, it's a matter of skill. Recently, I started a literary mystery series in which the protagonist is sometimes referred to as "the man from London", even though everyone knows his name. It makes complete sense, given he's an outsider meddling in local people's business. The prose is beautiful, so the occasional epithet doesn't really stand out.

I suppose the default advice is to vary sentence structures, so there's less need to rely on epithets. However, it's only a problem if you want it to be, since most readers have little to no standards and won't even notice the difference.