Flower Girls: Our Expert Guide To Selecting & Wearing Floral Fragrances

Sorry, vanilla, but there's a new hot note in town...and it isn't gourmand. According to a recent NPD report, floral fragrances are the number-one scent category in the U.S., representing a total of one-third of all fragrance purchases in the first quarter of 2013. That's a lot of flowers, people.

But, the all-encompassing term "floral" doesn't really do justice to the nuances of this oh-so-feminine scent category. What you'll smell from a rose-based scent is worlds away from what you'd find with an iris one.

To help us decipher the difference between the expansive bouquet of fragrances available, we asked two perfume world vets — Franco Wright, co-founder of Lucky Scent, and Steven Gontarski, manager at Scent Bar in Los Angeles — to identify the 10 most common floral notes and give us their expert descriptions for what each one really smells like.

And, once you've figured out which note is right for you, we went ahead and highlighted a few new scents that best showcase your flower of choice. We're giving like that.