When the New York-based women’s wear designer Marina Moscone was 3, she stole her father’s burgundy leather briefcase and used it to carry around the sketches she made wherever she went. Not long after, she announced to her parents that she was becoming a fashion designer. A couple of years later, at age 7, she decided she would eventually move to New York from her native Vancouver , British Columbia, to study at the Parsons School of Design. While watching reruns of the Canadian TV show “Fashion File,” she had learnt about the school.

Something that Moscone, now 33, attributes not to fate but to the tenacity she gained while learning ballet as a teenager, will all come to pass exactly as she had expected.

“It’s that really weird ballerina school of thought,” says Moscone, who, until college, would often dance 30 hours a week. “Ballet teaches you a relentless level of discipline and determination, and that entered my personality a bit,” she adds, “for better or worse.”