Louise Linton wears ball gowns to apologize for her Instagram rant

In what some are calling a bold statement of irony, actress Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, has at last apologized for lashing out against a critic on Instagram on Aug. 21 — while wearing a ball gown on the cover of Washington Life magazine’s Balls & Galas issue.

“I want to say I concede completely to the comments of my critics,” Linton said in an exclusive interview for the magazine. “My post itself and the following response were indefensible. … It’s clear that I was the one who was truly out of touch and my response was reactionary and condescending.”

The since-deleted post in question was a photo of her and Mnuchin, descending the stairs of a U.S. military jet on a trip to Kentucky, in which she named all the designer labels she was wearing with hashtags. When Jenni Miller, a mother of three from Oregon, commented, “Glad we could pay for your little getaway. #deplorable,” Linton replied with a rant that called the woman “adorably out of touch” and bragged about how much she and her husband “sacrifice” in taxes.

Washington Life writer Virginia Coyne begins the cover story explaining that this controversial exchange took place on the day Linton was scheduled to sit down for an interview with her. She kept her appointment but later called and asked the magazine to pull the article, knowing that it wouldn’t look good while everyone was comparing her to Marie Antoinette.

But weeks later, she decided to do another interview and pose in ball gowns by Ines di Santo and Jason Wu anyway. She used this as an opportunity not just to express her regret for writing such things, but also to tell readers that the glamorous image she was trying to depict on Instagram was not really her.

“On a daily basis, I’m a girl that’s at her desk, barefoot in gym clothes working on films and animal welfare,” she said.

Linton’s critics on social media aren’t buying that.

Linton understood that she was setting herself up for more attacks with the photo shoot. “I see the irony of making an apology in a ball gown!” she said. “But it would be dishonest to proclaim that I’m never going to another social function. That’s also part of my life.”

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