Two films, "Ghost World" and "Art School Confidential," serve as backdrops for an examination of art education, revealing identity conflicts among artist, student, and teacher. This article addresses ideas of uniqueness, uniformity, professionalism, and nakedness through the concept of personal dress. This critical discussion explores the influence of society on the Lacanian identity in terms of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real registers. Clothing expresses personal identity while providing a mask for the lack of a unified self. In exposing dynamics between conflicting identities, the phantom reality of self and the possibility of self-questioning to artists/educators, this article suggests a repressive ghost in the academic host and a suppressive ghost in the host-self. (Contains 3 figures.)