Even the word
Lingerie alone conjures up images of love, romance, frills and lusty behaviour. I suppose that makes it both provocative and evocative at the same time, but I'm not here to write an essay. Our web-dominating friend Wiki says:
Lingerie is a term for fashionable and notionally alluring undergarments. It derives from the French word linge, "washables" — as in faire le linge, "do the laundry" — and ultimately from lin for washable linen, the fabric from which European undergarments were made before the general introduction of cotton from Egypt and then from India.
I'm afraid this first paragraph takes the sexiness and mystique away. The thought of washing tends to do that to both men and us from the fairer sex. Ah, but read on: