Okay, no way of getting around this—the chair is a quiet homage to a classic Eames management chair that typically costs around $3,000. But the SoHo II isn’t trying to dupe the Eames design—there’s no distinctive metallic back handle like in the pricier chair, for example. Instead, the Laura Davidson keeps what’s best about that modernist classic—the ribbed and curving seat and back, as well as the adjustable aluminum base—and loses the luxurious bits I’m not looking for in an office chair. It’s vegan, not animal leather, and the texture of the material wears as durably as leather in my two years of use.
The ribbed aluminum construction of the seat and back have a nice give to them when I sit, but I still feel supported. The 25-inch wide seat is plenty roomy, especially since I can cross my legs and rest my knees on the aluminum arms without feeling like they are going to loosen. (I’m a squirmy office worker, okay?) The leatherette comes in 19 colors, including the tan I use and the white that my dear friend got for her office. (She reports she loves hers too, although she’s worn a bit of her blue denim off onto the vegan leather from wearing jeans to work so often.) I was hesitant to order the Laura Davidson chair at first due to its caster feet—the recommended use is on a hard floor, and I wasn’t going to bring a plastic chair mat into my home, call-center style, in order to move my chair comfortably. I need not have worried, since the wheels move easily over the low pile carpet I have next to my desk.
Not only is the chair functional, but I’ve never once resisted sitting in it due to it being too stiff or rigid, the way I am on stools in the kitchen or even on dining room chairs. (I can slouch in it if I want to, is what I’m saying.) Finally, while the chair is quite firmly a midcentury modern design, its lines are clean and strong enough that I’m confident in mixing it into my newfound love of 1920s-era antiques.
Seriously, I didn’t want to spend hundreds on an office chair, but I’m glad I did for the my Laura Davidson Furniture SOHO II Ribbed Office Chair, since it’s a visual treat as well as a workhorse. That’s not an easy twofer—as star architect/designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said: “A chair is a very difficult object [to design]. A skyscraper is almost easier.” He died before he met my chair, but I feel sure he would have approved.
