Does the "bella" figura?

I work at home as a researcher-writer-translator, with most of my client contact done by phone and email. Once in a while I have to do a personal interview, but these are so few and far between that I have plenty of time to pull myself together -- the hair, the makeup, the right outfit and jewelry.  Okay, okay, the bella figura bit: when you gotta do it, you gotta do it.

But usually the people I interview don't care who I am, they want to do the interviews as fast as possible so they can get back to their "real" work. When I have a face-to-face encounter, some of them barely look up at me from their desks.