IC Double Bay is much cheaper and less posh than PH, both are fairly recently renovated. Personally I stay at Shangri-La which is half the PH price and nicer if you get a grand deluxe room (and still half the PH price ). Martin Place has several jewelers which start at $100k and go up but probably not the souvenirs you are looking for. Paspaley can do nice pearls for less, but cheapest I've bought was over $10k and a single pearl. Jimmy Choo store in Sydney is one of the better ones in the world and maybe cheaper now with exchange rates. Chanel is not (Singapore still cheaper than Oz for that).