Louise Linton Is Super-Duper Sorry

The wife of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and self-described “regular girl” knows what you think of her. But that doesn’t mean she’s about to disappear. In an exclusive interview and photo shoot with ELLE, Linton discusses her political marriage, the Trump family, and the Instagram moment that will haunt her forever.

- Carrie Battan

Louise Linton has accomplished the near-impossible task of locating an ordinary meeting place in the most moneyed stretch of the Upper East Side, where she and her husband, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, own an apartment. In this part of town, there is hardly a store in sight that doesn’t sell sweaters that cost more than most Americans’ mortgage payments. Prada, Tom Ford, Céline, Roland Mouret, Valentino—many of which Linton made the regrettable decision to tag in that fateful, now-deleted Instagram post—they’re all here. But for our meeting, she has selected the humble Three Guys restaurant, a bustling family dinner and an oasis of normalcy in a land of excess. I will meet Louise Linton, the 37-year-old woman most frequently described as the Marie Antoinette of our current era, at a place that serves mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers.

There are many other things Linton insists make her a regular person. She loves SoulCycle, for one. “That’s temple for me,” she says, dressed in a SoulCycle beanie and leggings. “This is my uniform. I wear SoulCycle stuff every single day of my life.” She’s fond of the expression super-duper. She is “super-duper” sorry for all of the missteps in her self-presentation. She finds the idea of doing a reality TV show, which many people have floated to her in recent months, to be “super-duper” scary.