Martha Stewart issued a second apology on Sunday after dressing up as a homeless person for Halloween, admitting that her first attempt at damage control fell short.
“It’s hard to admit when you’ve really screwed up,” the lifestyle mogul said in a new statement shared by Page Six.
“My earlier statement didn’t go far enough. I know many people are suffering economically. Wearing a costume like I did was insensitive and not funny,” Martha continued.
It’s a major reversal for the 85-year-old, who spent the first part of the weekend insisting the costume had a higher purpose.
The controversy started on Saturday, October 31, when Martha shared Halloween photos of herself on Instagram.
In the images, she wore tattered clothing, including ripped jeans, and had makeup applied to make it look like dirt was caked on her face.
She also held a sign that read, “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!”
The post reportedly doubled as a promotion for candles, a detail that did not help her case with critics.
The backlash was swift, and Martha deleted the photos from her account.
By then, however, screenshots were already circulating across social media, and the costume was being picked apart by fans and fellow celebrities alike.
Martha’s first response did not go over much better.
In a statement to the same outlet that later published her apology, she said she was “distressed” by the reaction and claimed she had “intended to bring more awareness to homelessness” with the look.
She also maintained that offending anyone was “never my intention.”
Martha then went a step further and defended the costume directly in the comments section of an entertainment outlet’s Instagram post about the controversy.
Critics argued the explanation only made things worse, pointing out that dressing up as someone experiencing homelessness for a holiday party is a strange way to raise awareness of the issue.
Among those who spoke out was Pose star Indya Moore, who slammed the costume and later reacted to Martha’s “awareness” statement.
Plenty of fans piled on as well, with one X user writing, “People like her disgust me.”
Others questioned why a woman with Martha’s fabulous wealth would choose a costume built around someone begging for food.
The wealth angle has come up again and again in the backlash, with Martha widely described as a multimillionaire in coverage of the scandal.
She has never been shy about her success. Just last month, Martha revealed on the “Other People’s Business” podcast that she once earned $65 million a year from her Kmart royalties alone.
“We were selling close to $2 billion worth of merchandise,” she said at the time, adding that the deal funded the development of her magazine and the rest of her business.
That kind of fortune made the “I AM HUNGRY” sign land especially badly with people who are struggling to pay their bills.
Martha wasn’t the only star to catch heat for her Halloween choices this year, as her look ended up included in roundups of the most offensive celebrity costumes of 2026.
But hers drew some of the loudest criticism, largely because of how firmly she stood by it at first.
Martha has spent decades building her image as America’s ultimate homemaking authority, and she has stayed in the headlines in recent months with everything from a cheeky Instagram tease about “releasing my nudes” to her blunt take on Meghan Markle’s lifestyle brand.
Those moments mostly earned her laughs and applause.
This one went in a very different direction, and it took Martha two statements in two days to fully own it.
Martha Stewart Deletes Her ‘Poor Person’ Halloween Costume From Social Media was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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