ABSTRACT In this paper, an ultra-miniaturised textile antenna is designed and developed for 2.45/5.8 GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band applications. The proposed microstrip line-fed dual-band antenna consists of non-conducting (Felt) and conducting (Sheildit Super) textile materials. The size of the antenna is 20 mm×30 mm×1 mm, and its (S11≤–10) bandwidths in the lower and upper resonant bands are 14.2% and 27.5%, respectively. In addition, various fabrics are considered and characterised in order to investigate different possibilities for textile antennas. The proposed antenna configuration is simple, compact, easy to manufacture, and efficient for wearable/textile applications. The proposed textile antenna performance is studied for on-body situations using the three-layered human shoulder model and four-layered human arm model. The antenna offers consistent on-body performance even when subjected to deformations caused by bending.