Will Follis has just been offered his first big job, with a crypto hedge fund, when we meet in Darien, Connecticut, a week before his 27th birthday. The interview was the day before, in heatwave Manhattan, an hour away by train. Follis wore the navy Rodd & Gunn jacket his parents had given him for his last birthday and he thinks it made all the difference. “I looked pretty dang sharp, even if I do say so myself,” he says. “If I’d worn anything heavier, I’d have passed out.”

We’re standing next to the till in the vast menswear floor of Darien Sport Shop, a mall-sized shrine to American sportswear. Trade is brisk on a hot Juneteenth, though not many take the holiday in this picture-book town, 20 minutes down the freeway from Greenwich, America’s hedge fund capital, average household income $US275,000-plus ($423,000). The price tag ($US348) still hangs from the moss-green blazer Follis wears as his mother flexes the credit card on his next birthday present.