Le Sol promotes art, travel and meaningful connections

Leon Bridges performed at her home. Multiple times.

First in 2019, he did a concert in her backhouse. Through a mutual friend, he asked to come back, so Kidd Springs neighbor Taylor Madison hosted a few more gatherings with him performing that were never open to the public. Then, in 2021, it was a backyard concert. Madison speaks fondly of that night. She calls that gathering a house party, just friends of a friend who came out.

“That moment in Oak Cliff history will go down as, like, you just can’t make something like that up. You can’t pay for it. Sometimes there’s a creative energy that happens and a momentum of community,” she says.

Those nights with Leon Bridges are part of what has inspired her to open her home to more than just her closest friends. Her get-togethers grew and grew, and with that growth, Madison says she wanted to create something that was more sustainable.

“I hosted a lot of community events and out of my own pocket, whether it was just getting a lot of creatives together to put on something fun, and I love doing that. But there was also … I wanted something more from my career,” Madison says.

That something became Le Sol, a membership-based club that officially launched in 2023 with the aim to build “a global community through curated experiences,” both locally in Dallas and around the world. “Inspired by art, travel and meaningful connection,” according to the website.

Originally from North Texas, Madison graduated early at 17, followed a “rodeo guy” she was dating on a move out to a horse farm in Mississippi and later attended the University of Mississippi. After graduation, she participated in Teach for America.

“I went to business school, and then right before I was about to graduate, I was like, ‘I really love kids, and I want to do something meaningful,’” she says. “So I taught kindergarten for two years in Nashville through that program.”

She later moved back home to reconnect with her Texas roots and stayed in education, working with a private family foundation and later Dallas ISD to develop reading programs.

“I was really trying to make an impact on education … but at the end of the day, I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” Madison says. “It breaks your soul a little bit. It did for me anyways. Working in public school, I had 25 kids each year, no assistant. It’s just a hard system.”

That’s when Madison decided to pivot to the travel business, starting a blog known as “The Simple Sol” and becoming a travel agent in 2014. As she continued to work in the travel world, a lot of her work entailed developing honeymoon trips for her clients, and she created her former members-only travel club Sol Society at the end of 2018. These experiences are what have shaped today’s Le Sol.

“I still do it (work in travel), but the hospitality aspect of being exposed to all that has definitely informed Le Sol,” she says. “We are a hospitality company, and I love creating experiences for people. I love hospitality. I love service, and I also love bringing inspiration and ideas from other cultures and infusing it back to my neighborhood, which I think is the whole point about travel. You can travel, but what are you doing in your own neighborhood and what are you bringing back, and how are you putting that in?”

Traveling a lot with her career made it hard to find her own Dallas community.

“I tried out all the classes and was hoping to maybe meet somebody in the locker room or changing, but I never met anybody there,” she says. “Like, nobody wanted to chat and hang out, so I was like, ‘How do you meet people?’”

At that time, local businesses Beatnik Fine Goods and Tribal All Day Cafe recently opened, and Madison discovered that those owners all went to Ole Miss like her. She took that connection as an opportunity.

“I went to Lindsey at Beatnik and said, ‘Hey, I want to host some friends over here. I want to have this party. I know this musician, he can sing on his guitar. I want to have a moon circle, but I don’t have anyone to invite,’” Madison says. “She’s like, ‘Oh, I can invite some people for you.’ And that’s slowly kind of how that started.”

Before the pandemic, Madison was regularly hosting at her first Kidd Springs home, now known as the Le Sol House, a three-bedroom, two-bath, complete with front porch and backhouse.

She had been inviting friends for gatherings, such as hosting private, free yoga classes in the renovated backhouse, and pre-trip or post-trip parties for travelers from her group trips. These gatherings were not hosted as a part of today’s membership-club, rather just inviting people over. Those were the people that gave her home the nickname “Sol House.”

Today, each room of Le Sol House offers a different vibe with seating for members to use at their leisure. The kitchen has a cafe menu, and the living room includes rotating art. Madison says that she has always been inspired by France and French culture with particularly Le Sol House showcasing that.

When COVID-19 hit, Madison spent that time renovating, building the garden, acquiring some chickens and fully redoing the backhouse, which serves as a wellness studio. The space hosts yoga classes, rising rituals and sound baths. These were opportunities she hosted for friends at her home to enjoy free of charge before launching the membership model.

Le Sol is meant to be a third space, not a concert or event venue. Madison says she hosted one wedding prior to the official membership launch, just as a favor to friends.

“They reached out to me during COVID and said, ‘Hey we’re engaged. We’ve looked everywhere, we’re thinking about Florida. Is there any way you would let us get married in your backyard?” she says. “Again, I still lived here. And in 2021, they got married in the backyard. We are not a wedding venue. We don’t advertise as a wedding venue. I did this as a personal favor to friends.”

The goal of Le Sol is to not only continue to bring people together, but also bring places together.

“People will take a yoga class, then maybe hang out and work, or meet friends for coffee, so the idea is that there’s not everything so separate,” Madison says. “That’s what I was feeling when I moved to Dallas, and besides wanting to make community, it was like you drive here to go to yoga. You have to drive here to go to your coffee shop, then you have to drive here to go meet friends, and this is a place where you can kind of get a one-stop shop.”

She has since expanded those gathering spaces into a second Kidd Springs home, known as Château Le Sol, which sits just across the street. Château has three-bedrooms and three-baths complete with a bamboo forest, pool, a garage artist studio that hosts a rotating resident artist, a wrap-around balcony and a basement that runs the length of the house with remnants suspected to be from the prohibition era, such as peepholes and bottles.

Madison says she saw the house sit on the market for a long time, eventually buying it with the intention to revamp the property in a way that preserves what it is. She adds that the previous owner seemed to be a hoarder.

“She had like 15 animals living in here, and we just came in, and really cleaned it up,” she says. “We tried to restore it. … The walls are all concrete. And what’s also special about both these properties is the springs runs through both of the properties.”

Château specifically still has the well visible in the center of the garage.

While running her business out of her homes, Madison says she has a great relationship with her direct neighbors.

“But then, the outside noise of non-neighbors, like, I just have to kind of put my blinders on and do what I know is right and with good intention, and that’s Le Sol,” she says.

That “outside noise” comes from those who don’t approve of her home-based social club.

A March 2025 Facebook post from Rob Shearer states his opinion of Le Sol plainly: “For over a year, the Kidd Springs Neighborhood Association has worked to address the blatant zoning and code violations at Le Sol House — a business operating illegally out of two residential homes in our neighborhood.”

That post was sparked by a planned, but later canceled, meet and greet with District 1 Council member Chad West during his reelection campaign. In December 2025, the Dallas Observer reported that the City had launched an investigation into the club for code violations.

Madison speaks frankly about the situation, mentioning that from the beginning, she always knew she was going to get a Specific Use Permit for Le Sol. She thinks once she finally acquires that “it’ll be smoother sailing.”

“I have to be very strategic of how to protect this place and how to protect the neighborhood and the homes in the neighborhood, and knowing that when Leon started coming, there’s always been a plan in place of what does this look like,” she says. “But that meant being really strategic about who I let dictate if this was good or bad for the city. Sometimes (to) change, you have to go and be in front of things, and you have to take a risk.”