It's interesting what men find sexy in the way of clothing...
There was an essay in Esquire years ago where a guy extolled the sexiness of his wife's plain cotton panties-- not the bikini mid-rise kind, but the old-fashioned full-sized ones. It was a very sweet essay... and you could see how this particular garment really rang his chimes. I think a lot of it has to do with the kind of stuff a guy was exposed to when he was sexually awakening.
For my late H, he always remembered a calendar that was in some garage or something when he was a teenager... it showed a flirty woman wearing jeans that were unzipped and lowered a bit so that her undies were showing. I don't think he ever told me what she was wearing on top. That didn't seem to register on him.
He was also very turned on by the sight of a woman smoking a cigar. When he was 14 his grandma took him to visit family in Germany and I think he met an older woman (~17!) who smoked a cigar. I don't mean she smoked cigars regularly, but she smoked at least one. That image stayed with him forever. At age 60, he even ordered videos of fully clothed women slowly and seductively smoking cigars -- no dialogue and they just sat there looking at the camera smoking, never removed any clothes or did anything except smoke the cigar (clearly there is a market for these videos).
On a different note... SuperDave can chime in here-- I think it's interesting that in America, the word panties has a slightly titillating sound... in England, it's the word "knickers," right? And I think it's very cute that they refer to the Queen of England's underwear as her "smalls." I love England.
