i don't automatically notice someone's appearance...it's usually something someone says that makes me begin to think of them in that sort of way.
The woman I mentioned, who I met a few months ago -- seriously, she's the most gorgeous person I've seen in my life. Yet I didn't notice this until we began to talk in depth. The elderly woman from my previous post -- she was sitting with said woman, and flagged me over to introduce us. She is always introducing me to her random friends, so I barely registered. I trudged outside to sit and read the Times.
Some minutes later I went back in, to talk to my friend who works there. She was busy, so I leaned against the doorframe. The woman positioned herself across from me, as if to suggest conversation.
I noticed her outfit before I noticed her face. Really nice, old-fashioned overcoat and scarf. Looked like something Lalla Ward's Romana would wear. We began to talk, and her intelligence was immediately apparent. I started to pay more attention. It was about when she started to list vocabulary words that I had been trying to use myself that the haze melted away and I fully realized what she looked like. Which was just... impossible, frankly. No one looks like that.
I later learned that she was a model, actually. Among other things. Not professionally as such. Not that she altogether told me this; it's just that her listing was the first (correctly-spelled) Google hit on her name. Having discovered the pictures, I hemmed and hawed over them for some minutes before feeling vaguely strange and creepy and choosing to abandon this line of inquiry.
So... er. Yes. Such are my powers of observation.