To begin with, having an office chair named Elle immediately strikes my curiosity. Of course, I was hoping it would be ergonomically designed for a woman—alas, there is no such thing. Maybe for good reason. Is the female body so intrinsically different as to merit its own chair? I have no idea, but I doubt it. To get the right office chair, you simply need to try out a whole bunch. Everyone’s body and proportions are different: some of us have short torsos; others long; some of us have short arms; others so long that they look like orangutans. Having said that, good ergonomic design, construction, and materials will go a long way.

Elle. Designed by Luca Nichetto and Stefano Bottino for Emmegi.

Italian company Emmegi “is synonymous with innovative and functional quality as well as ongoing research into design that achieves the right balance between market demands and the dictates of aesthetic style.” And their Elle collection offers a task chair with enough bells and whistles that it might just be the one for you. The basic unit is a generous office chair with a 5-star swivel base on casters whose height adjusts from 43-52 cm. It has a generous seat and a good height of 63 cm. The distance from the seat to the armrests is 21 cm (here’s where the odd specifics of your own body come into play; it either fits or it doesn’t). If you’re very tall, or simply want to hide within your chair, you can choose the Elle Office Chair with an additional headrest, bringing the chair’s total height to 82 cm.

Designed by Luca Nichetto with Stefano Bottino, Elle Office Chair looks surprisingly good, despite its purpose (let’s face it: often the most comfortable task chairs look like visitors from a distant planet). Both dynamic and versatile, Elle can be upholstered to anyone’s liking, in various grades of upholstery, including fabric, wool, and leather. Emmegi isn’t short on options, offering all the standard colors as well as more unusual hues such as salmon, grape, and electric blue. The Elle Office Chair has one available print: a mod design of interconnecting lines of varying thickness in mocha, ocean, desert, and wood. I would have enjoyed the print in acid green, tangerine, or aquamarine—something a bit more psychedelic. You can’t get everything you want in every office chair, but Elle is a great choice for those people—male of female—who fit it best.